In an environment of increasing government expenditures financed largely viii through taxes, including a relatively visible and large residential property tax, the issue of whether property taxes are capitalized into market values is increasingly important. Property tax capitalization is the reflection of property taxes in the value of real property. The capitalization of property tax does not necessarily pose a problem; rather, problems arise when homes identical to each other have different taxes and these differentials are then capitalized into market values. These capitalized tax differentials result in large capital gains and losses to owners of real estate. This study (1) reviews existing economic theory and empirical evidence on the capitalization of property taxes, (2) develops a model of property valuation inclusive of tax effects, and (3) estimates the parameters of this model using a comprehensive data set of over 334 home sales in the Logan, Utah area. The empirical results include an estimate of the tax capitalization effect. Two closely related issues are also addressed in the study. They include: (I) changes in real estate prices, including a suggested method for measuring such change and (2) a study of property tax equity, including two specific measures of tax fairness. The conclusions are (I) tax differentials are capitalized; (2) real estate prices in the study area increased approximately 10 percent per year from 1989 to 1992; and (3) there is significant variation in assessment ratios.

The purpose of these two studies was to examine two factors that may influence the effects of uncertainty on information processing. The first factor is the positioning of uncertainty relative to a target of judgment, and how this affects people’s judgment processing. The second factor had to do with the degree to which uncertainty signals active goal conflict or not. In the first study, 145 participants with a mean age of 19.51 were induced with uncertainty either before or after information about the target accused of illegal behavior. The results demonstrated that uncertainty before information produced higher guilt judgments of the target and uncertainty after information produced lower guilt judgments towards the target, but only in a subset of conditions. The second study, with 121 participants and a mean age was 19.58, primed participants with one of two different goals. It then induced uncertainty threat which either was or was not relevant to the primed goal, and asked participants to make judgments based on information given about the target as in Study 1. The results revealed that for women, but not for men, uncertainty threat produced stronger guilt judgments when the uncertainty was relevant to the primed goal. Together, these results indicate that both the positioning and goal relevance of uncertainty may impact its effect on information processing.

No / The use of first-hand service user accounts of mental illness is still limited in the professional literature available. This is, however, beginning to change, with a new ‘recovery’ focus in mental health services meaning that the voices of service users are finally being heard. Recovering from Psychosis: Empirical Evidence and Lived Experience synthesises a narrative approach alongside an evidence-based review of current treatment by including Stephen Williams’ own personal experience as it relates to psychosis, recovery and treatment. A mental health professional himself, the author’s account of his own recovery from severe mental health difficulties, without sustained intervention, challenges the orthodoxy of representation of service users in mental health. Recovering from Psychosis critically explores and reviews the current state of the art of research and knowledge about the nature and treatment of psychosis. Working simultaneously from empirical, lived experience and philosophical perspectives,Stephen Williams: Evaluates political and power related issues in professional understanding, knowledge-creation and treatment of people with psychosis; Introduces the current ‘recovery movement’, unpacking its origins and implications for the future development of ‘recovery oriented services’; Reviews, summarizes and critiques the current state of ‘recovery’ research, looking at the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach, examining how this is influencing the transformation of UK mental health services; Analyses the difficulties in organisational implementation of recovery approaches, summarises the most empirically robust approaches to practice, personal and service delivery measurement; Reviews current ‘models’ of psychosis and how various professional scientific groups explain the experience and nature of psychosis; Uses lived-experience accounts taken from the scientific literature, portraying the nature of such experiences and analysing them in the face of contemporary psychological models. Recovering from Psychosis is an essential comprehensive guide for mental health professionals, psychologists, social workers and carers, who are working with people with severe and enduring mental health difficulties diagnosed as psychosis. It addresses the practical implications of working with such difficult conditions and serves as a hopeful story of recovery for service users.

The aim of this study is to investigate family therapists understanding of knowledge, theories and methods in the treatment of mothers who use violence against their children. The study is made on the basis that the operation is not based on clear evidence-based knowledge and examines how family therapists understand and combines existing methods and theories in social work. Methodically the study is based on qualitative interviews with five family therapists in different municipalities in the south of Sweden. A compilation of the interviews gave rise to two main themes: Mothers and violence respective Treatment. The result shows that there are not always explicit methods and theories available in the treatment of violent mothers. Despite this, the family therapists shows a large degree of consensus regarding methods and theories. In the discussion it is suggested that this may be due to some theories and methods are so integrated in the environments that the family therapists are active in that they do not specifically reflect on them. They have, in short, become routine. / Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka familjebehandlares förståelse av kunskaper, teorier och metoder i behandlingen av mammor som använder våld mot sina barn. Studien görs mot bakgrund av att verksamheten inte bygger på tydliga evidensbaserade kunskaper och undersöker hur familjebehandlare, mot denna bakgrund, förstår och kombinerar i socialt arbete befintliga metoder och teorier. Metodiskt bygger studien på kvalitativa intervjuer med fem familjebehandlare i olika kommuner i södra Sverige. En sammanställning av intervjuerna gav upphov till två huvudteman: Mammor och våld respektive Behandling. Resultatet visar att det inte alltid finns uttalade metoder och teorier att tillgå i behandling av våldsutövande mammor. Trots detta uppvisar familjebehandlarna en relativt stor samstämmighet kring metoder och teorier. I diskussionen föreslås att detta kan bero på att vissa teorier och metoder är så integrerade i de miljöer familjebehandlarna är verksamma att de inte längre uttrycklig reflekterar över dem. De har, kort sagt, blivit rutin.

The purpose of this study is to explore if the use of virtual reality (VR) improves performance in sports and examine whether there is empirical evidence supporting this. There is a lack of a common denominator that can be used as a direct comparison between various studies. Construct validity, the degree of which a method and test accurately trains and assesses what is required on the sports field, could be this link. A scoping review of empirical research evidence, using methodology adapted to the field of engineering, was conducted. This review sourced articles from two databases, PubMed and Scopus. The selection process was conducted according to PRISMA, using specific selection criteria. A total of 23 articles were analysed. An absolute majority of the examined articles (74%) demonstrated that VR is an effective tool in boosting performance of participants in the respective studied sports. Martial arts and ball sports are the sports utilising VR technology the most in our sample, the studies examining these sports demonstrate positive performance outcomes of VR training. The results of this scoping review clearly demonstrates that there is empirical evidence that VR technology is used in a variety of sports to train and test important performance factors. For the future, more controlled studies should examine causal relationships between VR training and subsequent outcomes to further assess VR technology and its effect on sports performance. Studies should consider using tests and VR training methods that are as close to real world equivalent training methods in sports as possible in order to improve construct validity. The level of construct validity could be evaluated through a score system (0-10), which can be used to directly compare the quality of the studies examining VR as a tool for training and performance between sports. / Syftet med denna studie är att utvärdera användningen av virtual reality (VR) som ett medel för att förbättra prestationen inom sport och om det finns empiriska bevis som stödjer detta. VR har potentialen att förbättra prestationen inom olika sporter för amatörer såväl som elitidrottare oberoende av väder och vind samt geografiska restriktioner. En scoping-review genomfördes, med metodik adapterad till ingenjörsvetenskap. Sökningen utfördes via sökmotorer PubMed och Scopus. Det saknas en gemensam nämnare som kan användas som ett jämförelsemått mellan de olika studierna. Begreppsvaliditet, i vilken utsträckning en test och träningsmetod är tillämpbar för att träna och mäta prestationsförmågan på fältet, kan vara ett sådant mått. 23 artiklar valdes ut med stöd av inklusions och exklusionskriterier med PRISMA-metodik. En absolut majoritet av de utvalda artiklarna (74 %) påvisade att VR var ett effektivt verktyg för att höja prestationsförmågan hos försökspersonerna inom sina respektive sporter. Kampsport och bollsporter är de mest populära sporterna som använder VR-teknik inom vårt urval, studierna som publicerats i dessa sporter visar positiva utfall av VR träning. Sammanfattningsvis finns det empiriska bevis som visar att VR teknologi används i en rad olika sporter för träning och test av olika faktorer för att förbättra prestationsförmågan i respektive idrott. Denna scoping-review visar att VR-träning förbättrar prestationsförmågan i en majoritet av utvärderade artiklar. För framtiden finns ett behov av att studier studerar kausala samband mellan VR träning och utfall för att förbättra VR teknologin och dess påverkan på idrottsprestationer. Studier bör anpassas så att tester och träning är så lika som möjligt till verkliga idrottsprestationer för att förbättra begreppsvaliditeten och kanske göra denna faktor till ett mått/score (0-10) som kan användas för att kunna jämföra kvaliteten av studier kring effekten av VR träning mellan olika idrotter.

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Context: Global software development is the emerging trend in today’s world as it provides the software companies with certain advantages like access to skill and cheap labor, low development cost etc. There are also many challenges and risks involved in globally distributed software project as compare to co-located projects like communication, coordination and control etc. due to geographical separation. There is also a recent interest in applying agile methods in offshore projects in order to minimize certain offshore challenges. Agile methods in collocated environment demands high communication, coordination and collaboration between the team members. However implementing agile methods in distributed environment is beneficial and challenging too, because of inherited GSD challenges. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully understand the benefits and challenges of applying agile methods in distributed project before actually initiating the development. Objectives: This research study aims to look at current empirical evidence regarding benefits and challenges of applying agile methods in offshore projects, in order to understand it properly. Furthermore, we have examined that which of the benefits and challenges reported in literature can be seen in practice. This helped us in finding out the similarities and differences between the benefits and challenges that are reported in literature and in practice. Methods: To fulfill our aims and objectives we have first conducted the detailed systematic review analysis of the empirical studies from year 2000-2010. The systematic review approach helped us to collect and summarize the empirical data available regarding the benefits and challenges of applying agile methods in offshore projects. The research studies were identified from the most authentic databases that are scientifically and technically peer reviewed such as Inspec and Compendex, IEEE Xplore, ACM digital library, Springer Link, Science Direct, Google Scholar, Scopus, ISI Web of Knowledge and Willey Inter Science Journal Finder. Furthermore, industrial survey was conducted in order to identify whether the benefits and challenges enlisted in literature can be confirmed by practitioners. This helped us in determining the similarities and differences between benefits and challenges that are reported in empirical literature and industrial survey. Results: From systematic review results, we have found the list of benefits and challenges of most applied agile practices such as daily scrum meetings, sprint planning meetings, sprint review meetings, retrospective meetings, pair programming, short release and on-site customer. The most common benefits related to above identified agile practices are early problem identification, project visibility, increase communication, coordination and collaboration, trust, clarification of work and requirements, early client feedback and customer satisfaction. Similarly the most common challenges associated with above identified agile practices are lack of linguistic skills, culture differences and temporal differences. From survey result, it was found that the majority of benefits and challenges identified through literature review are prevalent in software industries to some extent. We were able to identify the benefits and challenges of agile practices such as daily scrum, sprint planning meetings, sprint review, retrospective meetings and short release. The most common benefits of above identified agile practices highlighted by survey participants are project visibility, early problem identification, increase coordination, opportunity for knowledge sharing and transferring, immediate feedback from client, and opportunity for understanding the task properly. Similarly the most common challenges identified by survey participants are language problems, temporal difference and difficult to explain and understand problems or issues over communication technologies. However, there are certain challenges like trust and culture issues, which have received most attention in the empirical literature, but are not identified by majority of industry respondents. Conclusions: From the information attained so far regarding the benefits and challenges of agile methods in offshore projects, we observed that there is an emerging trend of using agile methods in offshore projects and practitioners actually found it beneficial. The benefits of agile practices does not achieve straightaway there are certain challenging factors of GSD too, which can restrict the implementation or make the methodology not useful such as communication, coordination and collaboration. These challenges are usually occurred due to geographical separation, lack of trust and linguistic skills, culture difference etc. The presented work add contribution in a sense as to the best of our knowledge no systematic review effort has been done in this area with specifically focuses on highlighting the benefits and challenges. From survey results we found that majority of benefits and challenges highlighted by survey participants are to some extent same with what we have already studied in literature. However there are certain important challenges which have received most attention in empirical literature but were less identified by the survey participants like trust issue and culture difference. The benefits and challenges identified through industrial survey do not add much information into our attention. This does not mean that all possible benefits and challenges of applying agile methods in offshore project have been explored. The responses which were received from industry practitioners were quite few to make any kind of arguments. There is a probability that we missed the important benefits and challenges related to particular agile practices during our industrial survey. Therefore we conclude that a much thorough and inclusive answers should be required to identify the benefits and challenges of applying agile methods in offshore projects.

Usability aspects of programming languages are often overlooked, yet have a substantial effect on programmer productivity. These issues are even more acute in the field of Inductive Synthesis, where programs are automatically generated from sample expected input and output data, and the programmer needs to be able to comprehend, and confirm or reject the suggested programs. A promising method of Inductive Synthesis, CombInduce, which is particularly suitable for synthesizing recursive programs, is a candidate for improvements in usability as the target language Combilog is not user-friendly. The method requires the target language to be strictly compositional, hence devoid of variables, yet have the expressiveness of definite clause programs. This sets up a challenging problem for establishing a user-friendly but equally expressive target language. Alternatives to Combilog, such as Quine's Predicate-functor Logic and Schönfinkel and Curry's Combinatory Logic also do not offer a practical notation: finding a more usable representation is imperative. This thesis presents two distinct approaches towards more convenient representations which still maintain compositionality. The first is Visual Combilog (VC), a system for visualizing Combilog programs. In this approach Combilog remains as the target language for synthesis, but programs can be read and modified by interacting with the equivalent diagrams instead. VC is implemented as a split-view editor that maintains the equivalent Combilog and VC representations on-the-fly, automatically transforming them as necessary. The second approach is Combilog with Name Projection (CNP), a textual iteration of Combilog that replaces numeric argument positions with argument names. The result is a language where argument names make the notation more readable, yet compositionality is preserved by avoiding variables. Compositionality is demonstrated by implementing CombInduce with CNP as the target language, revealing that programs with the same level of recursive complexity can be synthesized in CNP equally well, and establishing the underlying method of synthesis can also work with CNP. Our evaluations of the user-friendliness of both representations are supported by a range of methods from Information Visualization, Cognitive Modelling, and Human-Computer Interaction. The increased usability of both representations are confirmed by empirical user studies: an often neglected aspect of language design.

Das primäre Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es, Belege für die zentrale Hypothese der Humankapi-taltheorie zu finden, dass Investitionen in Bildung, Forschung und Entwicklung einen erhöh-ten Output für die Gesellschaft und für das Individuum generieren. Die dafür notwendige Untersuchung wird anhand langer Zeitreihen für Deutschland mit Hilfe cliometrischer und ökonometrischer Methoden durchgeführt und das Ergebnis einer kritischen Würdigung unterzogen. Zur Einstimmung und zum besseren Verständnis des Untersuchungshintergrundes werden die Initiativen der in Deutschland bildungspolitisch Verantwortlichen beschrieben und an der Bildungssituation der früheren Bundesrepublik und des wiedervereinigten Deutschlands ab 1990 gespiegelt. Ein wesentlicher Bestandteil dieser Arbeit ist es, die Genese der Bildungsökonomie, ihre wichtigsten Aussagen und mathematischen Modelle zu skizzieren. Außerdem werden die in der Literatur schon veröffentlichten wichtigsten statistischen Ergebnisse, z. B. über Kosten und Renditen von Bildungs- und Forschungs-investitionen, wiedergegeben. Im Ergebnisteil dieser Dissertation werden die Interdependenzen der Bildungs-, Forschungs- und Entwicklungsausgaben u. a. mit den Schul- und Studienabschlüssen und dem Bruttoinlandsprodukt mit Hilfe der Zeitreihenanalyse untersucht. Bei kointegrierten Variablen werden die Schätzungen einer Fehlerkorrekturrechnung unterzogen, um eine Scheinregression zu vermeiden. Die Interdependenz der Variablen im Sinne der Humankapitaltheorie wird bestätigt; allerdings zeigen die Schätzgleichungen unterschiedlich große Ergebnisse bzgl. der Bestimmtheitsmaße. / The primary objective of this thesis is to provide proof for the central hypothesis of Human Capital Theory, that investment in education, research and development generates an increase in output for society and for the individual. Analysis will be made on the basis of long time series for Germany by making use of cliometric and econometric methods. The findings will then be thoroughly discussed and critically compared. To begin with, and to give a better understanding of the issue the initiatives of the educational-policy-makers will be described and put into relation to the educational situation in former West Germany and reunited Germany since 1990. The main aspect of this piece of research is to outline the genesis of economics of education, its core statements and underlying mathematical models. Furthermore, important statistical data which has already been published regarding (for example) the costs and return of investments in education, research and development will be presented. In the conclusion of this thesis, the interdependences of spending in education, research and development with inter alia graduation and gross domestic product (GDP) will be analysed by the means of time series analysis. When variables are cointegrated, estimates will be subjected to an estimate correction in order to avoid a spurious regression. The interdependency of the variables in the Human Capital Theory is affirmed, although the estimating equations give different results for the coefficients of determination.

Lean production originates from the Toyota production system (TPS) and is commonly known as today's Lean. Lean Production consists of a multitude of concepts, values, principles and methods with the main purpose to continuously improve operations and productions. These concepts are known to improve long-term profitability.   The purpose was to investigate Swedish industries and their relation to internal Lean strategies and how well implemented these are in different types of industries. These are categorised as Other, Process- Manufacturing and engineering industry. In this study, the main focus is on analyzing dimensions of internal Lean production in industrial types. These dimensions are Pull System (PULL), Continuous Flow (FLOW), Time Reduction (SETUP), Statistical Process Control (SPC), Employee Involvement (EMP.INVOLV) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). These internal Lean dimensions derive from an empirical study by Shah & Ward (2007), with the aim to produce a deeper knowledge of the definition of Internal Lean production.   The study is based on empirical evidence and the data analysis is established from a previous data collection of the European manufacturing Survey (EMS) for Sweden in 2019, previously developed by Von Haartman, Niss & Bengtsson (2020). The used data is descriptive statistics and is limited to Swedish industries. In this study, the analysis will focus on 24 Lean questions and 6 internal Lean dimensions have been investigated and analyzed.    It is concluded, based on results and analysis, that two Lean perspectives are the basis for businesses to achieve Lean in production. In order to succeed in implementing Lean production, it is important that these perspectives interact with each other. By implementing practical methods, tools and at the same time allowing employees to be involved in the work, quality and efficiency are increased. This contributes to businesses creating improvements in production-related functions in production.   To a large extent the Swedish industries have a Low or Medium use of internal Lean dimensions. TPM is found to be the most commonly implemented dimension for most individual industry types while the dimensions SPC and EMP.INVOLV has the lowest implementation. For individual industry types, there is no major variance in how they answered the implementation of dimensions. All dimensions have a correlation without significant differences for all types of industries. It is found, implementation of dimension PULL differ from each type of industry and Engineering industry have implemented internal Lean dimensions to a higher extent. / Lean produktion härstammar från Toyota production system (TPS) och är grunden till det dem flesta känner till idag som Lean. Lean Produktion omfattar många begrepp som innebär värderingar, principer och metoder där huvudsyftet är att ständigt förbättra produktionen i verksamheten för att bidra till långsiktig lönsamhet.    Syftet var att undersöka hur svenska industrier förhåller sig till interna Lean strategier och hur välanvänt det är inom olika industrityper. Dessa är fördelade som Övrigt, Process-, Tillverkning och Verkstadsindustri. Denna studie fokuserar på att analysera dimensioner av intern Lean produktion hos industrityper. Dessa dimensioner är dragande system (PULL), kontinuerligt flöde (FLOW), Ställtidsreduktion (SETUP), Statistisk processtyrning (SPC), Medarbetarnas involvering (EMP.INVOLV) och Totalt produktivt underhåll (TPM). Dessa interna Lean dimensioner härstammar från en empiriska studie av Shah & Ward (2007), med syftet att skapa en djupare förståelse för definitionen av intern Lean produktion.   Studien baseras på empiriska belägg och grundas utifrån en tidigare datainsamling från European manufacturing Survey (EMS) för Sverige år 2019, tidigare framtagen av Von Haartman, Niss & Bengtsson (2020). Datan som används är deskriptiv statistik och avgränsas till Svenska industrier. I denna studie kommer endast 24 frågor och 6 interna Lean dimensioner att undersökas och analyseras.    Slutsatsen är att det finns två Lean perspektiv som är grunden till att verksamheten uppnår Lean i produktion. För att lyckas med implementering av Lean produktion är det viktigt att dessa perspektiv samspelar med varandra. Genom att implementera praktiska metoder, verktyg och samtidigt tillåta medarbetarna involveras i arbetet ökar kvaliteten och effektiviteten. Detta bidrar till att verksamheter skapar förbättring av tillverknings relaterade funktioner i produktionen.   Samtliga industrier i undersökningen har i utsträckning en Låg eller Medelhög användning av interna Lean dimensioner. TPM är den mest använda dimensionen hos de flesta enskilda industrityperna medan dimensionerna SPC och EMP.INVOLV har lägst användning. För enskilda industrityper finns det ingen större varians i hur de har besvarat användningen för dimensioner. Alla dimensioner har ett samband i korrelationer utan signifikanta skillnader för samtliga industrityper. Det konstateras, att implementering av dimension PULL skiljer sig från varje typ av industri och Verkstadsindustri har implementerat interna Lean dimensioner i högre utsträckning.