Die wachsende Nachfrage der Nutzer nach dem Zugang zu internationalen bibliothekarischen Ressourcen verstärkt die Notwendigkeit zur Erstellung der seit mindestens über 15 Jahren gewünschten Konkordanzen von Klassifikationssystemen, z. B. zwischen dem in Deutschland stark verbreiteten Regensburger Verbundklassifikationssystem (RVK) und dem international weit verbreiteten Universalklassifikationssystem, der Dewey Dezimalklassifikation (DDC). Andererseits bleibt eine vollständige Konkordanz zwischen den beiden genannten Klassifikationssystemen aufgrund des erheblichen Aufwandes ein noch nahezu unberührtes Feld. Deshalb wurde Ende 2009 das Teilprojekt „coli-conc“ (DDC-Konkordanzen zu anderen Klassifikationssystemen) des VZG-Projektes Colibri/DDC initiiert. Anfang 2011 wurde mit der Erstellung einer Konkordanz (Gebiet „Medizin und Gesundheit“) zwischen dem DDC- und RVK-System begonnen. Davor und parallel dazu wurde eine vollständige EZB-DDC-Konkordanz für das Projekt „Nationallizenzen“ erstellt. Für die Ermittlung des Entwicklungsstandes zu vorhandenen DDC-RVK-Konkordanzen wurde eine auf Mailverteilern versendete Online-Umfrage ausgewertet. Die Erstellungsmethode der DDC-RVK-Konkordanz im Projekt „coli-conc“ erfolgt semi-automatisch mittels Ausschlussprinzip. Die ca. 1,5 Mio. große Titeldatensatzmenge, deren Titeldatensätze sowohl DDC- als auch RVK-Notationen enthalten, dient als Datenbasis für die semi-automatische Erstellung von DDC-RVK-Konkordanzen. Als Beispielbereich wurden für die DDC-Klasse „614 Rechtsmedizin; Inzidenz von Verletzungen, Wunden, Krankheiten; öffentliche Präventivmedizin“ eine bidirektionale Konkordanz und deren DDC-RVK-Korrelationsbeziehungen ermittelt. Im Vortrag werden die oben genannten Themen und erste Ergebnisse präsentiert.

對於大部分的人而言，寫作是一種深度的表達過程，需要詳盡而深入的描述能力及精準而嚴謹的語意呈現。對於非英語為母語的學習者(ESL/EFL)來說，英語寫作尤其是一個困難的過程，常常會因為單字、搭配字(collocation)、句型結構等方面的認知不足，或是受到母語認知的牽制影響，而造成用詞、語法、甚至語意的錯誤。 近年來，語料庫的發展帶來了豐富的語言資源，不僅可以對語言的使用提供許多統計分析上的資訊，也可以做為語言學習者在特定詞語使用上的參照對象。目前語料庫的詞語使用參照以concordance技術為主，提供以特定字詞為基準的上下文例句排列，這種功能對ESL/EFL學習者於寫作過程所提供的參照仍然相當有限；而對於不同的查詢條件，若沒有良善的輸入和比對機制，往往搜尋上的數量和例句品質無法滿足學習者的參照需求；除此之外，對於檢索結果語料庫也沒有評估與排序的概念，學習者往往需要在大量的資訊中篩選出有用的資訊；綜觀以上幾點，目前語料庫技術無法滿足不同程度的ESL/EFL寫作者在參照協助上的需求。 本研究提出一種文句推薦方法，針對ESL/EFL寫作者在寫作過程上的認知不足或不確定，從語料庫中尋找出可用的參照例句，進而提供針對性的協助。我們的文句推薦方法包含三個模組，第一模組是一個彈性的表達元素模組，能針對寫作過程中的語言資訊需求，以規定的表達元素呈現作者的認知需求。第二模組是一個檢索模組，指從語料庫中比對尋找符合作者語意需求的例句。第三模組是一個排序的模組，針對找出的例句，評估其符合作者語意需求的程度，並將之排序，以提升例句參照的使用效率。 本研究依據文句推薦方法實做雛形系統，以British National Corpus和科學人雜誌語料庫(Science America)當例句來源，並依據論文的客觀評估和學習者的問卷調查兩種評估方式來評量雛形系統的成效。經由上述兩種評估方式，本研究驗證雛形系統能針對ESL/EFL於寫作過程中給予一定程度的協助成效，證明本研究的文句推薦方法確實能達成寫作協助的既定目標。 / For most people, writing is a process of profundity. It requires well description of capabilities and excellent semantic of representations. For ESL/EFL (English as a Second Language/English as a Foreign Language) learners, English writing is a particularly difficult process. They have error in words, syntax or semantics because their expressions are constrained by their mother tongue or by lacking of the awareness of vocabularies, collocation, or sentence-structures. In recent years, according to the development of corpus technique, we have rich resource in language. The resource can not only provide many statistical analyses of informations in language research but also can be used as a reference in the use of specific words for the learners. Current corpus technique use concordance which displays the words with their surrounding text to present sentences, but that approach provides very limited references in the writing process for ESL/EFL learners. Also considering the different inquired queries, if we have no well-defined input and retrieval module, the quantity and quality of results could not meet the demand for the learners. In addition, corpus technique doesn’t provide the ranking and evaluating skills to the retrieval results. As a result of that, learners often require filtering a large number of information to find something useful. In view of the above points, current corpus technique is unable to satisfy different degrees of ESL/EFL learners in the writing process. This paper presents a Sentence Recommendation Approach technique. With regard to the inadequate knowledge in the writing process for ESL/EFL learners, we search for useful sentences from the corpus and provide them to learners. Our Sentence Recommendation Approach technique has three modules: one is Expression Element Module. It allows the learners to use some expression elements to represent their demand. Another is Retrieval Module. It means the process of searching the corresponding sentences based on the expression elements in Expression Element Module. The last is Sort Module. It means the process of ranking the results derived from the Retrieval Module. Our research establishes the experimental system to verify the performance of our Sentence Recommendation Approach technique. We use British National Corpus and Science America Corpus for the source of sentences. The evaluation is divided into our objective evaluation and the questionnaire evaluation. Both of them prove that our experimental system does some favor in the writing process for ESL/EFL learners. In other words, our Sentence Recommendation Approach technique really helps the learners in the writing process.

Within the realm of the natural sciences there are different written genres for interested readers to explore. Popular science articles aim to explain advanced scientific research to a non-expert audience while research articles target the science experts themselves. This study explores these genres in some detail in order to identify linguistic differences between them. Using two corpora consisting of over 200 000 words each, a corpus linguistic analysis was used to perform both quantitative and qualitative examinations of the two genres. The methods of analysis included word frequency, keyword, concordance, cluster and collocation analyses. Also, part-of-speech tagging was used as a complement to distinguish word class use between the two genres. The results show that popular science articles feature personal pronouns to a much greater extent compared to research articles, which contain more noun repetition and specific terminology overall. In addition, the keywords proved to be significant for the respective genres, both in and out of their original context as well as in word clusters, forming word constructions typical of each genre. Overall, the study showed that while both genres are very much related through their roots in natural science research they accomplish the task of disseminating scientific information using different linguistic approaches.

O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar uma proposta para o ensino de colocações adverbiais em inglês, típicas da área de negócios, à luz da Linguística de Corpus. Para isso, compilamos um corpus monolíngue em inglês britânico e americano, composto de periódicos de negócios e relatórios de empresas disponíveis on-line, num total de 2.310.143 palavras. Com a ajuda do Wordsmith Tools 5.0 e de cálculos estatísticos (escores T e Informação Mútua), levantamos as vinte e cinco colocações adverbiais mais recorrentes no corpus de estudo e as analisamos quanto aos padrões léxicogramaticais. Feita a análise, selecionamos dentre essas unidades colocacionais aquelas que poderiam ser abordadas em sala de aula, segundo os critérios estabelecidos pela pesquisadora, com base na abordagem DDL de Tim Johns (1991), na modelagem de Carter (1998) e nas críticas feitas ao uso das linhas de concordância no ensino de línguas. Elaboramos, assim, exercícios que foram aplicados em três estudos-piloto, realizados com alunos de inglês para negócios de um instituto de idiomas privado, nos seguintes níveis: pré-intermediário, intermediário e intermediário superior. Nos três estudos, comprovamos a aplicabilidade dos exercícios e a importância da Linguística de Corpus como abordagem ao ensino de línguas. / The aim of this work is to put forward a proposal for teaching typical adverbial collocations in Business English, based on Corpus Linguistics principles. To accomplish that, we compiled a monolingual corpus in British and American English, composed of business press texts as well as company reports available on-line, totalling 2,310,429 words. With the use of Wordsmith Tools 5.0 and statistical scores (T-score and Mutual Information), we found the twenty-five most frequent adverbial collocations, which were lexically and grammatically analysed concerning their patterns. Next, from these collocational units we selected the ones which could be approached in class, following the criteria set by the researcher, based on Tim Johns DDL (JOHNS, 1991), Carters modelling (CARTER, 1998) and the objections raised concerning the use of concordance lines for language teaching. Thus, we planned exercises to be applied in three pilot studies, carried out with Business English students at a private language school in São Paulo, Brazil, at the following levels: preintermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate. The three studies demonstrated that such exercises can be successfully used in Business English classes thus confirming the relevance of Corpus Linguistics as an approach to language teaching.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:22:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cristiane Magalhaes Bissaco.pdf: 1808687 bytes, checksum: 0ae56dbe478bdddc91abb7fd911b2c3a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-10-14 / Since MERCOSUL began the search for courses of Spanish as a foreign language has considerably increased in Brazil, directly affecting the production of learning materials, which normally don t include authentic data collected from corpora of the targeted language. The use of authentic materials for learning a language is an issue that has been constantly raised by Corpus Linguistics studies as a key element for providing students with the language the way it is ordinarily used by native speakers. Therefore, the main theoretical framework for the research is provided by Corpus Linguistics (BERBER SARDINHA, 2004; BIBER et al, 1998; JOHNS, 1994, 1991a, 1991b; SINCLAIR, 1991), specially the use of concordances for teaching a second or foreign language. Although there are several studies based in the use of concordances for teaching, little is known about how the interaction among Spanish students and the teacher occur when they are doing activities with concordances. Therefore, the theoretical framework is also embodied with the principles of interaction and mediated learning experience, under the social interactionism view (VYGOTSKY, 1978/1984, 1962/1987; VYGOTSKY, LURIA & LEONTIEV, 1934/1986). This research aims at observing the application of language learning activities with concordances in order to discuss and analyze the existence of mediation and interaction criteria in teacher-student/student-student relations. Four lessons focusing each on the learning of one specific lexical item and its patterns were recorded. The transcripts were analyzed lesson by lesson, according to each speaker, following the mediated learning criteria proposed by Feuerstein (1997a, 1980, 1975) and the interaction criteria proposed by Kumpulainen & Wray (2002). The mediation analysis results showed the following teacher/student relations: individuation/sharing, challenge/competence, intentionality/sharing and intentionality/competence. As for the interaction analysis, the results showed the teacher more frequently asking or organizing followed by the student answering. The data also showed the existence of a sequencing of criteria, which hasn t been noted by any of the previous studies. The complete analysis of the data showed that activities with concordances although have been commonly associated to individual and autonomous learning also favor interaction and mediated leaning / Desde o advento do MERCOSUL houve um crescimento da demanda de cursos de língua espanhola no país, o que afeta diretamente a produção de materiais didáticos, os quais, normalmente, não contemplam dados autênticos, levantados em corpora da língua a ser aprendida. O uso de material autêntico no ensino de línguas vem sendo destacado pela Lingüística de Corpus como peça chave no acesso do aprendiz à língua, da maneira como ela é usada no cotidiano. Portanto, a pesquisa encontra suporte teórico principal na Lingüística de Corpus (BERBER SARDINHA, 2004; BIBER et al, 1998; JOHNS, 1994, 1991a, 1991b; SINCLAIR, 1991), especialmente, no que diz respeito ao uso de concordâncias. Embora haja diversos estudos sobre a aplicação de concordâncias para o ensino de línguas, pouco se sabe a respeito de como ocorre a interação entre alunos e professor enquanto realizam atividades com concordâncias no ensino de língua espanhola. Assim, completa o arcabouço teórico desta pesquisa os princípios de interação e mediação sob a perspectiva sócio interacionista (VYGOTSKY, 1978/1984, 1962/1987; VYGOTSKY, LURIA & LEONTIEV, 1934/1986). Esta pesquisa objetiva observar a aplicação de atividades com concordâncias, a fim de discutir e analisar critérios da mediação e da interação existentes nas relações professora-aluno/aluno-aluno. Foram aplicadas e gravadas quatro aulas que visavam criar condições para a aprendizagem do significado de um item lexical e seus padrões de uso. Suas transcrições foram analisadas uma a uma, fala por fala de cada um dos participantes, seguindo os critérios de mediação propostos por Feuerstein (1997a, 1980, 1975) e os critérios de interação, propostos por Kumpulainen & Wray (2002). Os resultados da análise de mediação mostraram a ocorrência das seguintes relações entre professora/aluno: individuação/compartilhamento, desafio/sentimento de competência, intencionalidade/compartilhamento e intencionalidade/sentimento de competência. Já em relação à interação, o que mais se observa é professora perguntando ou organizando, seguida pela resposta do aluno. Os dados também revelaram a existência de seqüências de critérios, o que não havia sido apresentado nas leituras anteriores. Em geral, pode-se concluir que as atividades com concordâncias, apesar de sugerirem aprendizagem autônoma, também propiciam comportamento interacional e momentos de mediação

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:22:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Helenice Serikaku.pdf: 3162432 bytes, checksum: 31458c5c6f756832a75971e51e2f6664 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-06-13 / Brazilian learners of Spanish as a foreign language frequently have difficulties with unstressed pronouns usage. Their usage settings are different in both languages ─ in Spanish it tends to be marked in speech, and, in Portuguese, it tends to be omitted. The difficulty not only concerns using these pronouns with their canonic function of direct and indirect object, but also la, las, lo, and le forms without the mentioned function ─ known as lexicalized unstressed pronouns (PAL). This research aims to identify patterns of PAL as well verbs that co-occur with PAL according to Corpus Linguistics framework and its methodological resources (BERBER SARDINHA, 2000, 2004), within a lexicographic tradition (SINCLAIR, 2004). A corpus representative of Spanish general language, esTenTen 11 (KILGARRIFF, 2004), which contains almost ten billions words and it embraces European and American Spanish variants, was considered. Through the reading of concordance lines, firstly, verbs that co-occur with PAL were extracted. Then patterns of use of these verbs co-occurring with PAL were identified. It was noted that la, las, lo, and le have various performances, which makes it hard for these particles to be classified functionally. These ones might allude to an absent reference concurring with patterns of verb with present reference; influence verb meaning; provide verb with a pragmatic and expressive sense and it tends to appear naturally with the verb within the Idiomatic Principle / O aluno brasileiro aprendiz de Espanhol como Língua Estrangeira frequentemente enfrenta dificuldades com o uso dos pronomes átonos em espanhol já que, entre os dois idiomas, a configuração de uso desse grupo de partículas é distinta ─ enquanto no espanhol a tendência é seu uso marcado, prevalece a sua omissão no português do Brasil. Essa dificuldade não só concerne à utilização dessas formas dentro de suas funções canônicas de pronome objeto / complemento direto e indireto, mas também ao uso das formas la, las, lo e le sem essas funções ─ caso dos pronomes átonos lexicalizados (PAL), objeto desta pesquisa. O objetivo é identificar os padrões de uso dos PAL la, las, lo e le, assim como os principais verbos com os quais esses PAL coocorrem, segundo os princípios teóricos e recursos metodológicos adotados pela Linguística de Corpus (BERBER SARDINHA, 2000, 2004), notadamente pela sua tradição lexicográfica (SINCLAIR, 2004). Um corpus de estudo representativo da língua geral foi utilizado, o esTenTen 11 (KILGARRIFF, 2004). Ele abrange as variantes europeia e americanas do espanhol e possui quase 10 bilhões de palavras, etiquetadas morfossintaticamente. Através da leitura de linhas de concordância obtidas no corpus, tendo como foco as formas não canônicas dos pronomes átonos, foram extraídos os verbos que coocorrem com os PAL. A seguir, mais pesquisas foram realizadas sobre as linhas de concordância para identificar os principais padrões de uso dos PAL. Pode-se perceber que os PAL la, las, lo e le têm comportamentos variados, o que torna difícil fazer uma classificação funcional para cada uma dessas partículas. Estas podem aludir a um referente ausente, concorrendo com padrões de verbos com referente presente; influenciar na significação do verbo; dotar o verbo de um sentido pragmático-expressivo; e tender a aparecer junto do verbo por princípio idiomático do espanhol. Esta pesquisa pretendeu contribuir para uma área escassa de estudos, cuja importância é clara em face das necessidades pedagógicas do brasileiro aprendiz de ELE

O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar uma proposta para o ensino de colocações adverbiais em inglês, típicas da área de negócios, à luz da Linguística de Corpus. Para isso, compilamos um corpus monolíngue em inglês britânico e americano, composto de periódicos de negócios e relatórios de empresas disponíveis on-line, num total de 2.310.143 palavras. Com a ajuda do Wordsmith Tools 5.0 e de cálculos estatísticos (escores T e Informação Mútua), levantamos as vinte e cinco colocações adverbiais mais recorrentes no corpus de estudo e as analisamos quanto aos padrões léxicogramaticais. Feita a análise, selecionamos dentre essas unidades colocacionais aquelas que poderiam ser abordadas em sala de aula, segundo os critérios estabelecidos pela pesquisadora, com base na abordagem DDL de Tim Johns (1991), na modelagem de Carter (1998) e nas críticas feitas ao uso das linhas de concordância no ensino de línguas. Elaboramos, assim, exercícios que foram aplicados em três estudos-piloto, realizados com alunos de inglês para negócios de um instituto de idiomas privado, nos seguintes níveis: pré-intermediário, intermediário e intermediário superior. Nos três estudos, comprovamos a aplicabilidade dos exercícios e a importância da Linguística de Corpus como abordagem ao ensino de línguas. / The aim of this work is to put forward a proposal for teaching typical adverbial collocations in Business English, based on Corpus Linguistics principles. To accomplish that, we compiled a monolingual corpus in British and American English, composed of business press texts as well as company reports available on-line, totalling 2,310,429 words. With the use of Wordsmith Tools 5.0 and statistical scores (T-score and Mutual Information), we found the twenty-five most frequent adverbial collocations, which were lexically and grammatically analysed concerning their patterns. Next, from these collocational units we selected the ones which could be approached in class, following the criteria set by the researcher, based on Tim Johns DDL (JOHNS, 1991), Carters modelling (CARTER, 1998) and the objections raised concerning the use of concordance lines for language teaching. Thus, we planned exercises to be applied in three pilot studies, carried out with Business English students at a private language school in São Paulo, Brazil, at the following levels: preintermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate. The three studies demonstrated that such exercises can be successfully used in Business English classes thus confirming the relevance of Corpus Linguistics as an approach to language teaching.

This dissertation examines the effectiveness of interventions related to family planning and the uptake of HIV-related preventive services among women in low-income settings. Women in low-income settings and living with HIV face many barriers to care, including limited access to services for family planning and HIV-related preventive care. At the same time, national, regional, and global efforts are looking for interventions to help control rapid population growth, create an HIV-free generation, and provide adequate preventive care for those living with HIV. This dissertation cuts across these issues and can help to inform debate and policies to address these issues. This dissertation comprises three discrete papers. Paper 1 (chapter 1) examines the effectiveness of a national scale-up of community-based distribution of family planning services on contraceptive use in Malawi’s rural areas during the period 2005-2016. The national-scale up of the intervention followed the success of a pilot of a similar intervention implemented in the period 1999-2004. As in the pilot, the scaled-up program distributed condoms and oral contraceptives and provided family planning education. Further, because education and income are important determinants of individual contraceptive use, the paper also examines whether the effectiveness of the national scale CBDs varies over these dimensions. The paper uses the Malawi Demographic and Health Surveys. The study finds that the intervention increased contraceptive use by 6.8 percentage points and the effects were greater among uneducated and low-income women. Paper 2 (chapter 2) conducts a cost-effectiveness analysis of a trial of cash incentives aimed at increasing the uptake of services for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV. The trial was conducted in the Democratic of the Congo (DRC) as part of an effort to find ways of increasing uptake of PMTCT services in sub-Saharan Africa where uptake of these services remains low. The study is conducted from the societal perspective, relies on multiple sources within and outside of the DRC for cost data, and reports economic costs in 2016 International Dollars (I$). At a threshold of 3*GDP per capita for the DRC (I$2409), the study finds that the intervention is cost-effective. Paper 3 (chapter 3) examines the guideline concordance of the time to follow-up anal cancer screening in women living with HIV at high risk for anal cancer. In the US, the incidence of anal cancer in women living with HIV has increased significantly in the past 2-3 decades. However, early detection of anal cancer, through regular screening, can lead to effective secondary prevention of the disease. While guidelines for anal cancer screening exist, very little is known about the guideline concordance of the time to follow-up anal cancer screening in women at high risk of acquiring anal cancer. Hence this study. The study uses Medicaid Analytic eXtract files which compile claims of individuals enrolled in Medicaid—a public health insurance program largely for eligible low-income adults and the largest single payer for HIV/AIDS in the US. The study finds that time to follow-up screening is not guideline-concordant for most women living with HIV, particularly those with one of the two risk factors for anal cancer: a history of abnormal cervical test results or a history of genital warts.

Le cadre de ce travail est l'étude de modèles neuromimétiques de codage parallèle et asynchrone de l'information visuelle ---tel qu'il est mis en évidence dans des taches de traitement ultra-rapide--- en la transformant en une vague d'événements élémentaires d'importance décroissante. Nous allons baser dans un premier temps les mécanismes de ce code sur les processus biologiques à l'échelle du neurone et de la synapse. En particulier, la plasticité synaptique peut induire l'extraction non-supervisée de l'information cohérente dans le flux des impulsions neuronales. Le codage par la latence de la première décharge permet de définir un code impulsionnel dans le nerf optique grâce une architecture multiéchelle. Nous avons étendu cette démarche en utilisant une approche \emph(écologique) qui permet exploiter les régularités de ses coefficients sur les images naturelles pour les quantifier par le rang d'arrivée des impulsions neuronales. Ce code par le rang des décharges, est basé sur une architecture hiérarchique et ``en avant'' qui se distingue, outre sa simplicité, par la richesse des résultats mathématiques et de par ses performances computationnelles. Enfin, nous avons répondu aux besoins d'un modèle efficace de la Vision en fondant une théorie de \emph(représentation impulsionnelle sur-complète) de l'image. Cette formalisation conduit alors à une stratégie de \emph(code impulsionnel épars) en définissant des interactions latérales. Cette stratégie est étendue à un modèle général de \emph(colonne corticale adaptative) permettant l'émergence de dictionnaires de représentation et s'adapte particulièrement à la construction d'une carte de saillance. Ces techniques font émerger de nouveaux outils pour le traitement de l'image et de vision active adaptés à des architectures de calcul distribué.

<p>Successful triage is the basis for sound emergency department (ED) care, whereas unsuccessful triage could result in adverse outcomes. ED triage is a rather unexplored area in the Swedish health care system. This thesis contributes to our understanding of this complex nursing task. The main focus of this study has been on the organisation, performance, and decision making in Swedish ED triage. Specific aims were to describe the Swedish ED triage context, describe and compare registered nurses’ (RNs) allocation of acuity ratings, use of thinking strategies and the way they structure the ED triage process.</p><p>In this descriptive, comparative, and correlative research project quantitative and qualitative data were collected using telephone interviews, patient scenarios and think aloud method. Both convenience and purposeful sampling were used when identifying the participating 69 nurse managers and 423 RNs from various types of hospital-based EDs throughout the country.</p><p>The results showed national variation, both in the way triage was organised and in the way it was conducted. From an organisational perspective, the variation emerged in several areas: the use of various triageurs, designated triage nurses, and triage scales. Variation was also noted in the accuracy and concordance of allocated acuity ratings. Statistical methods provided limited explanations for these variations, suggesting that RNs’ clinical experience might have some affect on the RNs’ triage accuracy. The project identified several thinking strategies used by the RNs, indicating that the RNs, amongst other things, searched for additional information, generated hypotheses about the fictitious patients and provided explanations for the interventions chosen. The RNs formed relationships between their interventions and the fictitious patients’ symptoms. The RNs structured the triage process in several ways, beginning the process by searching for information, generating hypotheses, or allocating acuity ratings. Comparison of RNs’ use of thinking strategies and the structure of the triage process based on triage accuracy revealed only slight differences.</p><p>The findings in this dissertation indicate that the way a patient is triaged, and by whom, depends upon the particular organisation of the ED. Moreover, the large variation in RNs triage accuracy and the inter-rater agreement and concordance of the allocated acuity ratings suggest that the acuity rating allocated to a patient may vary considerably, depending on who does the allocation. That neither clinical experience nor the RNs’ decision-making processes alone can explain the variations in the RNs triage accuracy indicates that accuracy might be influenced by individual and contextual factors. Future studies investigating triage accuracy are recommended to be carried out in natural settings.</p><p>In conclusion, Swedish ED triage is permeated by diversity, both in its organisation and in its performance. The reasons for these variations are not well understood.</p>