In many sport associations, regardless of level, women and men rarely practice together. Previous studies indicate that work groups are generally more efficient when there is an even distribution between the sexes. Could that also be the case in sports? This study aims to investigate whether the sex composition of a training group affects the effort and performance of the participants. Eleven volunteers participated in the crossover study consisting of three different 150-meter sprint conditions; individually, single-sex group and mixed-sex group. Sprint times, heart rate and RPE were recorded during all three trials. The result of this study suggests that there might be practical benefits in regards to physical performance and effort to exercise in a training group consisting of both sexes instead of training only with the same-sex or individually. The understanding could be useful in areas such as; training optimisation for both athletes and in patient- and rehabilitation groups, increasing efficiency in work environments, in schools and sports clubs striving for both athletic success and gender equality.

Doctor of Philosophy / Family Studies and Human Services / Jared R. Anderson / Cyclical romantic relationships—those characterized by breaking up and getting back together or having on/off periods—are a frequent phenomenon in the emerging adult population. These dating relationships maintain some distinctions from other more stable relationships, including the ways that partners strive to sustain relationship health. The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative inquiry was to increase in-depth understanding of how emerging adult dating partners’ relationship effort affects relationship transitions within cyclical dating relationships. Ten heterosexual emerging adult couples (10 men, 10 women) currently in cyclical dating relationships were interviewed about their experiences with relationship effort and maintenance. Participant interviews were analyzed according to the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) method. Specific themes emerged from the data, focusing on how perceived individual effort in the relationship, perceived partner effort in the relationship, and specific maintenance behaviors couples used to sustain relational health affected couple decisions about relationship transitioning. Implications regarding relationship education and clinical intervention among cyclical emerging adult couples are discussed. Future research could focus on continued expansion of understanding when in relationship history cyclical patterns begin, and how partners navigate transitions when both perceive reduced relationship effort.

In the literature on contests, punishments have received much less attention than prizes. One possible reason is that punishing the bottom player(s) in a contest where all contestants are not allowed to quit, while effective in increasing contestants' total effort, often violates individual rationality constraints. But what will happen in an open contest where all potential contestants can choose whether or not to participate? In chapter 1, we study a model of this type and allow the contest designer to punish the bottom participant according to their performances. We conclude that punishment is often not desirable (optimal punishment is zero) when the contest designer wants to maximize the expected total effort, while punishment is often desirable (optimal punishment is strictly positive) when the contest designer wants to maximize the expected highest individual effort. In the literature on imperfectly discriminating contests, researchers normally assume that the contest designer has a certain level of accuracy in choosing the winner, which can be represented by the discriminatory power r in the Power Contest Success Function (the Power CSF, proposed by Tullock in 1980). With symmetric contestants, it is well known that increasing accuracy (r) always increases total effort when the pure-strategy equilibrium exists. In chapter 2, we look at the cases where the contestants are heterogeneous in ability. We construct an equilibrium set on r > 0, where a unique pure-strategy equilibrium exists for any r below a critical value and a mixed-strategy equilibrium exists for any r above this critical value. We find that if the contestants are sufficiently different in ability, there always exists an optimal accuracy level for the contest designer. Additionally, as we increase the difference in their abilities, the optimal accuracy level decreases. The above conclusions provide an explanation to many phenomena in the real world and may give guidance in some applications. In chapter 3, we propose the Power Contest Defeat Function (the Power CDF)which eliminates one player out at a time over successive rounds. We show that the Power CDF has the same good qualities as the Power Contest Success Function (the Power CSF) and is more realistic in some cases. We look at both the Power CSF mechanism (selecting winners in sequence) and the Power CDF mechanism (selecting losers in sequence) and show that punishments increase expected total e¤orts signi cantly. More interestingly, we also find that when the contestants' effort levels are different, the Power CDF mechanism is more accurate in finding the correct winner (the one who makes the greatest effort) and the Power CSF mechanism is more accurate in finding the correct loser (the one who makes the smallest effort).

Prior research suggests that controls can negatively impact the motivation of employees to exert effort and that the detrimental effects of controls depend on control source. That is, controls cause more adverse behavior when employees attribute the source of control implementation to their manager’s decision than when the source of control implementation is beyond their manager’s authority. This study uses experiments to investigate whether the behavioral effects of controls depend not only on control source, but also on control framing, by which managers can frame the control implementation either for monitoring or coordinating purposes. The study also suggests that the interaction of control source and control framing impacts the strength of vertical collective identity, i.e. the shared identity between managers and employees, which in turn explains the differences in employee effort. While this study documents that the interaction of control source and control framing has no effect on vertical collective identity or employee effort, it finds a surprising result: employees respond more positively to the monitoring-framed controls than to the coordinating-framed controls, particularly when the controls are imposed by the manager. This finding suggests that persuasive messages can backfire if the employees are aware of the manager’s potentially self-serving motives behind the control implementation.

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

Previous studies have reported that deficits in attention are often a common complaint in individuals suffering from pain and attentional impairment in patients with pain has been demonstrated on a variety of neuropsychological measures. Much of the research to-date, however, has not taken into account extraneous factors that may contribute to observed cognitive deficits. Using the California Verbal Learning Test - II, attention and memory performance was examined in two clinical populations (pain and mild traumatic brain injury) while controlling for effort using the Word Memory Test. Controlling for effort led to different explanations of poor performance on attention variables. While mild deficits were expected, and could be accounted for by psychological factors (i.e. somatization), extremely poor performance was more likely related to poor effort. The findings of this study strongly support the necessity of measuring effort during neuropsychological and pain psychological evaluations.

This paper analyses and develops models for programmer participation and effort estimation in open source software projects. This has not yet been a centre of research, although any results would be of high importance for assessing the efficiency of this model and for various decision-makers. In this paper, a case study is used for hypotheses generation regarding manpower function and effort modeling, then a large data set retrieved from a project repository is used to test these hypotheses. The main results are that Norden-Rayleigh-based approaches need to be complemented to account for the addition of new features during the lifecycle to be usable in this context, and that programmer-participation based effort models show significantly less effort than those based on output metrics like lines-of-code. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers on Information Systems, Information Business and Operations

Tidigare studier beskriver vikten av samarbete inom hela vårdsektorn för att skapa en patientsäker vård. En jämn arbetsbörda och tillräckligt med personal är också betydelsefullt. Denna studie undersökte balansen ansträngning-belöning, överengagemang och om det samvarierar med samarbetsförmåga och trivsel i arbetsgrupper inom vården. Genom att använda Effort-Reward-Imbalance model mättes balansen ansträngning-belöning samt överengagemang på arbetet. Via enkäter och intervjuer undersöktes även samarbetsförmåga och trivsel. Av totalt 148 enkäter var respondenterna 78 kvinnor, 12 män, och 8 annat. Respondenternas ålder var mellan 26-65 år. Fyra respondenter intervjuades. Studien visade att balansen ansträngning-belöning inte tycks spela någon roll för samarbetsförmågan i arbetsgruppen. Respondenternas subjektiva upplevelse mynnade ut i sex centrala teman. Respondenterna framförde vikten av att arbeta i team, vilket även tidigare forskning visat. Arbetstagare inom vården verkar uppleva ett gott samarbete och trivsel på sina arbetsplatser, vilket är motsatsen till dagens lägesrapporter. Studien ger därför en annan synvinkel på vårdyrket.

A detecção é um fator que afeta a magnitude estimada de fauna atropelada, informação relevante nos estudos e trabalhos de biologia da conservação. Em rodovias, a estimativa da detecção é afetada por diferentes elementos, como os tipos de pavimento; os atributos das carcaças; as particularidades dos diferentes observadores e o método utilizado para aferição. Nosso trabalho avalia essas questões, especifica o esforço amostral e corrige a estimativa de fauna atropelada em relação à detecção. Encontramos diferença na estimativa de detecção entre os diferentes pavimentos; entre as carcaças similares e contrastantes ao substrato; entre os diferentes observadores e verificamos que através do monitoramento a pé não se detecta a totalidade das carcaças. Esses resultados e a estimativa de fauna atropelada corrigida comprovam a importância da aferição da detecção antes e depois da pavimentação das rodovias, através de método experimental. Sendo que o experimento deve contemplar a implantação de diferentes carcaças e ser realizado pelas equipes que participaram dos monitoramentos de fauna. / Detection is a factor that affects the estimated magnitude of the roadkill and is relevant information in biological conservation studies. In roads, the detection estimation is affected by many factors, such as type of paving, the carcasses traits, the particularities of different observers and the method used for measurement. Our study evaluates these questions, specify the sample effort and correct the roadkill magnitude in relation to detection. We found differences in the estimation of detection between the different kinds of paving, between carcasses similar to the paving and between those contrasting to the substrate. We also found differences between different observers and thus monitoring by walking does not detect all carcasses. These results and the roadkill magnitude corrected demonstrate the importance of the standardization of the detection before and after the paving of roads, via experimental methods. However, the experiment should include the implementation of different substrates and should be carried out by the teams that have already participated in the monitoring of fauna.

The purpose of this study was to compare and contrast within and between participant performance on three different measures of listening effort: a dual-task paradigm, pupillometry, and skin conductance; participants also subjectively rated the difficulty of their experience. A repeated measures design was used to address the reliability and validity of each measure. 20 participants were recruited and attended two sessions; the second occurred a minimum of one week after the first. Participants listened to sentences presented in stationary noise at four different signal-to-noise ratios: quiet, 0, -3, and -5 dB SNR. The variables of interest were: change in peak-to-peak pupil diameter, change in reaction time from baseline, skin conductance response amplitude, and skin conductance response quantity. The results indicated that as SNR decreased, speech perception performance decreased and subjective listening effort increased. Participants accurately and consistently rated the more difficult conditions as requiring more listening effort. The change in reaction time from baseline, peak-to-peak pupil diameter, and skin conductance response quantity increased as SNR decreased; skin conductance response amplitude did not vary as task difficulty increased, but skin conductance response amplitude was larger for incorrect responses than it was for correct responses. There was a significant practice effect observed for the reaction time data. The dual-task paradigm and pupillometry measures had the greatest reliability and validity. This study demonstrated that listening effort can successfully be quantified both subjectively and objectively by using a variety of tasks. Future studies may be able to use these measures to further assess listening effort in the clinic and in the real-world.