Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

The scores provided by the International Test of Developed Ability (ITDA) have been used as an alternative baseline for comparing the progress of students in the A-level Information System (ALIS) project of U.K. The responses of 26,964 examinees to the mathematics items of ITDA in year 2000 were fitted by using the Rasch model. Five subject groups (the population, 2 gender groups and 2 ability groups) and 25 random samples (5 from each group) were generated from the responses of the examinees. The unconditional maximum likelihood estimates of the item difficulty and examinee ability parameters for various groups/samples were produced by the RASCAL program. The scatterplots among different sets of sample item difficulty parameters reflected that the feature of item and ability invariance was not preserved in the groups of extreme abilities. The assumptions of unidimensionality, equal item discrimination, zero guessing factor and non-speededness were generally not supported in the two ability groups. In particular, the result indicated that the ITDA Mathematical Test might be a speeded test. It was quite interesting in this study to see that the item difficulty parameters and examinee abilities estimated from the Classical Test Theory (CTT) and those from the Rasch model were very comparable and both frameworks exhibit more or less the same feature in terms of invariance. On the other hand, more items were "found" unfit by the CTT method than the Rasch approach indicating that the former looks more sensitive to the lack of fit than the latter. To study the effect of speededness, the analysis was repeated with the last 11 items (which has the highest omits) deleted. Disappointingly, the results showed no significant improvement. Further research on the fitness of data with speed incorporated into the estimation of ability level is recommended.

Objetivo: Determinar la relación entre las conclusiones del test no estresante y los resultados perinatales en embarazos a término de gestantes atendidas en el Instituto Nacional Materno Perinatal, enero – agosto 2015. Metodología: El estudio fue de tipo observacional, correlacional, retrospectivo, realizado en 354 gestantes con embarazo a término con resultados de test estresante, de los cuales 321 tuvieron diagnósticos de NST reactivos y 33 no reactivos. El análisis estadístico se realizó en el programa Spss v.22., el análisis descriptivo de las variables cuantitativas se realizó por medidas de tendencia central (media) y medidas de dispersión (desviación estándar) y el análisis de variables cualitativas se estimaron por frecuencias absolutas y porcentajes. La relación entre las conclusiones del test no estresante y los resultados perinatales se midió mediante la prueba Chi cuadrado, el cual se consideró significativo cuando el valor de p fue < 0.05. Resultados: Los resultados perinatales de embarazos a término fueron: color normal del líquido amniótico en un 78.8%, apgar de 7 a 10 a los cinco minutos en un 99.4%, 99.4% de recién nacidos no se hospitalizaron y 100% de neonatos no llegaron a morir. No se evidencia relación entre conclusiones del test no estresante y la vía de parto (p=0.131) y el puntaje apgar a los cinco minutos (p=0.748), por otro lado se evidenció relación entre la conclusión del test estresante y la hospitalización del recién nacido (p=0.000). Conclusión: La conclusión del test no estresante no reactiva se relaciona significativamente (p=0.000) con la hospitalización de los recién nacidos de las gestantes a término. Palabras Claves: Test no estresante, resultados perinatales, embarazo a término. / --- OBJECTIVE: To determine the relationship between the conclusions of non-stressful test and perinatal outcomes in pregnancies to term pregnant women at the National Maternal and Perinatal Institute, January-August 2015. METHODOLOGY: the study was observational, correlational retrospective performed on 354 pregnant women with pregnancy to term with stressful test results, of which 321 were diagnostic reagents and 33 NST non- reactive. The statistical analysis was performed using the SPSS v.22 program. The descriptive analysis of quantitative variables was performed by measures of central tendency (mean) and dispersion measures (standard deviation) and analysis of qualitative variables were estimated absolute frequency and percentages. The relationship between the conclusions of nonstressful test and perinatal outcome was measured using the Chi square test, which is considered significant when the p value was <0.05. RESULTS: perinatal outcomes of pregnancies to term were: normal aspect of amniotic fluid in 78.8 %, Apgar from 7 to 10 within five minutes in 99.4 %, 99.4 % of newborns were not hospitalized and 100 % of infants not reached die. There is no relationship between findings of non-stressful test and route of delivery (p=0.131), the Apgar score at five minute (p=0.748), on the other hand, there is relationship between the conclusion of non-stressful test and the hospitalization of newborns (p=0.000). CONCLUSIONS: the conclusion of nonreactive not stressful test is significantly related (p=0.000) with the hospitalization of newborns of pregnant women at term. KEYWORDS: not stressful test, perinatal outcomes term pregnancy.

M.A. (Psychology) / Test anxiety has been widely researched in terms of its etiology and treatment. However, the results have been somewhat inconclusive, pointing to the fact that cognitive variables have not been accorded with the necessary amount of explanatory weight. The literature seemed to indicate that attribution of success and failure in test-related situations as well as the appropriate interpretation of cues in test-related information would account for a significant proportion of the variance observed in test anxiety. It was the purpose of this study to determine the extent and nature of the influence of attributional style and cue usage in test anxiety. In order to test the hypotheses two groups of students were selected. The experimental group consisted of students with high scores on two measures of test anxiety, and the control group consisted of students with low scores on the measures of test anxiety. These groups were then compare on scores of attributional style and cue usage. The hypotheses for the study were not supported. The results were discussed in the context of test anxiety approaching a phobic nature rather than a generalized anxiety state.

In order to introduce learning cases with real-world contexts to the Computer Science students in their early stage of learning, a set of Web applications that utilize Web services are simplified and customized to demonstrate the core concept of high-level test-driven learning methodology. Four e-commerce Web applications were implemented for this project. These applications show how real-world Web services work and interact with each other. By systematically planting a number of errors into the services, we created a learning environment for the students to understand the system structure and basic programming through their critical thinking. A goal is to keep students' interest in computer science. In doing so, a set of features that help students observe the systems' behavior are designed, and collectively formed a pattern of user interface "the Learner's Corner."

The Boston Naming Test (BNT) is a confrontation naming test which is used to measure naming ability. The primary purpose of this study was to identify whether cultural bias negatively affects South African’s performance on the Boston Naming Test (BNT). More specifically the study aimed to identify the exact items of the BNT on which South Africans perform poorly because of cultural bias. The research identified alternate responses given by respondents in terms of a percentage. The study further aimed to explore whether there was a significant difference in performance when comparing English, Zulu and Sotho respondents in terms of item response. This investigation also intended to discover whether being bilingual would affect South African’s performance on the BNT. Finally, the study aimed to explore whether there was a significant difference in the performance on the BNT when comparing male and female respondents. A significant difference was found between the South African and the Canadian sample in terms of item response. 40 items were revealed as problematic in a South African sample. Significant differences were found when comparing English respondents to Zulu respondents as well as when comparing Sotho respondents to English respondents. Although differences were found between male and female performance, the difference was not significant. Ultimately, no significant difference was found between monolingual and bilingual respondents.

Les circuits intégrés devenant de plus en plus complexes, leur test demande des efforts considérables se répercutant sur le coût de développement et de production de ces composants. De nombreux travaux ont donc porté sur la réduction du coût de ce test en utilisant en particulier les techniques de compression de données de test. Toutefois ces techniques n'adressent que des coeurs numériques dont les concepteurs détiennent la connaissance de toutes les informations structurelles et donc en pratique n'adressent que le test de sous-blocs d'un système complet. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons tout d'abord une nouvelle technique de compression des données de test pour les circuits intégrés compatible avec le paradigme de la conception de systèmes (SoC) à partir de fonctions pré-synthétisées (IPs ou coeurs). Puis, deux méthodes de test des systèmes utilisant la compression sont proposées. La première est relative au test des systèmes SoC utilisant l'architecture de test IEEE 1500 (avec un mécanisme d'accès au test de type bus), la deuxième concerne le test des systèmes pour lesquels la communication interne s'appuie sur des structures de type réseau sur puce (NoC). Ces deux méthodes utilisent conjointement un ordonnancement du test des coeurs du système avec une technique de compression horizontale afin d'augmenter le parallélisme du test des coeurs constituant le système et ce, à coût matériel constant. Les résultats expérimentaux sur des systèmes sur puces de référence montrent des gains de l'ordre de 50% sur le temps de test du système complet. / While microelectronics systems become more and more complex, test costs have increased in the same way. Last years have seen many works focused on test cost reduction by using test data compression. However these techniques only focus on individual digital circuits whose structural implementation (netlist) is fully known by the designer. Therefore, they are not suitable for the testing of cores of a complete system. The goal of this PhD work was to provide a new solution for test data compression of integrated circuits taking into account the paradigm of systems-on-chip (SoC) built from pre-synthesized functions (IPs or cores). Then two systems testing method using compression are proposed for two different system architectures. The first one concerns SoC with IEEE 1500 test architecture (with bus-based test access mechanism), the second one concerns NoC-based systems. Both techniques use test scheduling methods combined with test data compression for better exploration of the design space. The idea is to increase test parallelism with no hardware extra cost. Experimental results performed on system-on-chip benchmarks show that the use of test data compression leads to test time reduction of about 50% at system level.

In analysis of the contingency tables, the Fisher's exact test is a very important statistical significant test that is commonly used to test independence between the two variables. However, the Fisher' s exact test is based upon the assumption of the fixed margins. That is, the Fisher's exact test uses information beyond the table so that it is conservative. To solve this problem, we allow the margins to be random. This means that instead of fitting the count data to the hypergeometric distribution as in the Fisher's exact test, we model the margins and one cell using multinomial distribution, and then we use the likelihood ratio to test the hypothesis of independence. Furthermore, using Bayesian inference, we consider the Bayes factor as another test statistic. In order to judge the test performance, we compare the power of the likelihood ratio test, the Bayes factor test and the Fisher's exact test. In addition, we use our methodology to analyse data gathered from the Worcester Heart Attack Study to assess gender difference in the therapeutic management of patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) by selected demographic and clinical characteristics.

Fitness is important to achieve day to day tasks in our lives. It is significantly more important for the elderly as the functionality of the body declines. Fullerton Fitness Test (FFT) is a set of exercises to assess the fitness of the elderly. It was developed at Fullerton University by Dr. Roberta Rikli and Dr. Jessie Jones as a part of the LifeSpan Wellness Program. Under FFT, an individual is asked to go through a certain range of motions and based on these motions, a physician assigns a score to each exercise in FFT. The individual’s fitness is assessed based on these scores. At present, FFT is performed in the presence of a trained physician. The overall goal of the research presented in this thesis is to assess an individual’s fitness using a depth sensor mounted differential drive robot based on FFT without the help of a physician as a trained physician might not be always available and even if one is available, having one around every time is expensive. The robot autonomously navigates through the testing facility, tracks the user, assists the user performing FFT and saves the data in user file for further evaluation. The results received from the FFT is evaluated to measure the performance of the user. This data is also used for book keeping purposes and to track the progress of the user. This research is also concerned with integrating this setup with a smart home facility where all the data is stored in a central server.

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