Research indicates that relational aggression, social aggression, and indirect aggression are important predictors and outcomes of social development (Archer & Coyne, 2005). Socially, indirectly, and relationally aggressive behaviors are utilized in order to harm an individual’s social status, relationships, and/or social resources (Archer, & Coyne, 2005), but scholars disagree about the extent of the similarities and differences between these subtypes. Previous efforts to understand the distinction between these subtypes of aggression have been limited by how these behaviors have been operationalized and studied. The primary aim of the current study was to develop a self-report measure of these aggressive behaviors for emerging adults by utilizing factor analytic techniques to examine existing and newly created items. A series of five stages was used to code all items into existing theoretical categories of behavior (e.g., social aggression), establish the factor structure of the items, select the best items to measure each factor, test measurement invariance across subgroups (e.g., men and women), ensure strong psychometric properties, and relate the final factor structure to relevant developmental correlates (e.g., depressive symptoms). Three independent samples of emerging adults aged 18 – 29 years (49.51% –52.33% women; Mage= 25.71 - 26.26) were recruited online through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (sample 1 N = 299; sample 2 N = 299; sample 3 N = 119). Indirect, social, and relational aggression items were selected and adapted from existing self-report measures of these constructs for adults and several new items were created from qualitative interviews with emerging adults. Through a rigorous theoretical, methodological, and statistical approach, the Relational/Social Aggression in Adulthood Measure (RSAAM) was developed. The final factor structure consisted of three factors: Ignoring, Gossip, and Relational Manipulation. The three factors demonstrated measurement invariance across gender and educational groups and strong internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Purely relationally manipulative behaviors were distinct from other, related behaviors (i.e., ignoring, gossip) and were also differentially related to developmental correlates. Findings suggest that it may be advantageous for researchers to move beyond broad theoretical definitions of relational and social aggression and instead focus on the specific aggressive behaviors being enacted.

Improving physical activity (PA) participation is a public health priority in developed and developing countries to curb the substantial and growing prevalence of lifestyle-related diseases. Early childhood may be an especially important time to encourage PA; however, there is a paucity of research in this area. The aim of this research was to contribute to the limited body of work in PA in early childhood by investigating PA measurement approaches in young children and applying this knowledge to determine socio-environmental associations of preschool PA. An initial literature review provided the background for the thesis and determined the approaches taken in the ensuing chapters. A second literature review provided a detailed critique of research specific to PA measurement in early childhood to further inform the empirical studies. Information for the empirical chapters was drawn from three research projects: two studies were completed that assessed tools for objectively measuring PA in young children (pedometers and accelerometers), and these studies informed a final project to quantify associates of PA in a sample of preschool-aged children. Novel and important findings from the preliminary studies were that pedometer accuracy for measuring free-living PA and walking in children aged 3-5 years was poor, especially for pedometers worn at the back of the child, or during slow walking. Furthermore, when investigating the utility of accelerometers (more complex and frequently adopted tools) to quantify PA intensity in preschoolers, their application and use of commonly employed thresholds resulted in systematic underestimation of PA intensity and poor agreement (=0.09) when compared with a direct observation criterion measure. Application of existing accelerometer thresholds to classify PA intensity in preschoolers was therefore likely to yield biased estimates. Given the dearth of robust alternatives, a novel approach was developed to calculate individual activity rates from the raw accelerometer data. To account for over-dispersion in accelerometer counts, daily average activity rates per second were derived for each participant using negative binomial generalised estimating equation (GEE) models with a first-order autoregressive (AR1) correlation structure. These rates were assumed to be exchangeable between days and normally distributed. Potential socio-environmental associates of children’s activity rates and body size were thus assessed using normal GEE models with exchangeable correlation structures. Parental PA and child age were independently and significantly associated with child activity rates (P≤0.04). No relationships between child body size and PA or television (TV) exposure were found. Common approaches to PA measurement and data consideration were challenged in this research and novel robust methods devised utilising contemporary statistical methods. Accelerometer data can be successfully reduced to individual activity rates to mitigate current issues related to objective PA quantification with preschoolers. Parental involvement in preschool PA interventions is worthy of further investigation, and younger children may stand to benefit more from increased activity. Further exploration of the complex interactions between PA, exposure to media, and health outcomes in preschool-aged children is warranted.

Vincent W. S. Chan. / Prepard under NASA Grant NGL-22-009-013. Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph.D), M.I.T. Dept. of Electrical Engineering, l974. / Bibliography: p.128-129.

Robert E. Wernikoff. / "January 11, 1957." / Bibliography: p. 73. / Army Signal Corps Contract DA36-039-sc-64637. Dept. of the Army Task 3-99-06-108 and Project 3-99-00-100.

The investigation of this paper is introduced by describing an important collection of classes arising from a class which forms the domain of an abstract measure. Characterizations of the different types of classes will be formulated in order to facilitate the construction and the identification of the various classes considered.

Resilience engineering first appeared as a new approach for both system design and system safety in the last decade. One of the first substantive publications on resilience as applied to engineering was Resilience Engineering: Concepts and Precepts [Hollnagel et al. 2006]. Hollnagel, Woods, and Leveson developed the basic concepts behind resilience engineering in order to understand and prevent tragedies such as the Columbia Challenger accident and the September 11 terrorist attack.<p> In its present stage, resilience engineering has several fundamental problems. 1. There is not an appropriate definition for resilience. 2. The differences between resilience and other similar concepts are not clarified. 3. There is no quantitative method which can measure resilience. The three questions need to be addressed in order to advance the concept of resilience engineering and form a theoretical concept to an applied science. These three issues then form the foundation of this thesis.<p> As a first step, a resilience definition is presented based on the concepts of system function and damage. Then, the differences between resilience and five similar concepts (reliability, robustness, repairing, redundancy, and sustainability) are clearly elaborated. As a last step, a method for quantifying resilience is proposed in the form of a resilience index. This method exclusively measures system resilience by analyzing the system recoverability from two points of view: reconfiguration and replacement of components.<p> In order to illustrate the approach to and definitions of resilience, an actual application is considered: a water pumping station operated by SaskWater in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (the Clarence Booster Station). This pumping station is a complicated system consisting of mechanical electrical and chemical subsystems. The resilience of Clarence Booster Station is analyzed using the proposed definition of resilience and resilience index.<p> This thesis is just an initial step establishing a comprehensive definition (qualitatively and quantitatively) for resilience. The resilience index so defined in this work appears to have potential but much more scrutiny and refinement must be pursued to ensure that it is truly applicable to more universal engineering applications.

A pesar de la importancia de la exclusión social, no existe consenso sobre como se debe definir este fenómeno, ni de cómo debe medirse. El objetivo de esta tesis es afrontar estos problemas, definiendo una medida adecuada de exclusión social, para analizar posteriormente su dinámica. He desarrollado un enfoque de medición, de acuerdo con la definición operativa de exclusión social (considerando también estudios anteriores), para establecer si la exclusión social es un fenómeno parcialmente transitorio, así como para analizar las eventuales trayectorias de dependencia que la exclusión puede generar. Mi análisis es un nuevo enfoque para estudiar la exclusión social, y ofrece nueva evidencia empírica sobre la dinámica de la exclusión social en España desde el 1994 hasta el 2000 (usando los datos del panel europeo).He definido exclusión social como el proceso multi-dimensional que lleva a un estado individual de exclusión respecto al resto de la sociedad donde el individuo vive. La exclusión social en un instante del tiempo se define como la imposibilidad de conseguir algunos importantes "functionings". La elección de una medida adecuada de exclusión social no es nada fácil. Propongo usar un caso especial de la generalization multidimensional del índice de Foster-Green-Thorbecke. La motivación principal es que este índice tiene buenas propiedades axiomáticas (Bourguignon and Chakravarty, 2003) y es capaz de operazionalizar el enfoque de la capacidad de Sen. Remarcar que este índice es también adecuado para capturar la multidimensionalidad de la exclusión social y da una idea sobre la intensidad de la exclusión.He estudiado en profundidad la movilidad de la exclusión social siguiendo un enfoque relativo y utilizando las matrices de transición (análisis "two-stages"). Los principales motivos para usar las matrices de transición son los siguientes: primero, el análisis "two-stages" nos da una imagen sencilla de los movimientos de los individuos entre las clases especificas de exclusión social y, segundo, este análisis es robusto frente a la contaminación de los datos. Este tipo de análisis muestra que la exclusión social fue parcialmente un fenómeno transitorio. Me he centrado también en las causas del proceso de exclusión social, y encontré que un individuo que experimenta exclusión hoy, tiene mayor probabilidad de experimentar exclusión mañana, debido a la heterogeneidad observable y no-observable entre individuos, así como a la existencia de un verdadero estado de dependencia. El análisis ha consistido en estimar un modelo no-lineal de datos de panel. He utilizado un enfoque "random effects", y he elegido la solución propuesta en Wooldridge (2002) para solucionar el problema de las condiciones iniciales. Este enfoque muestra la importancia de la existencia de un verdadero estado de dependencia, así como de heterogeneidad entre individuos tanto observable como no-observable. / Despite its importance, there is remarkably little consensus among scientists on the definition of "social exclusion" and, therefore, on the best way to measure it. My aim in this thesis has been to address key problems regarding how to identify an adequate measure of social exclusion and how to analyse social exclusion dynamics. I then proceeded to develop an approach to measurement which was in accord with the working definition of social exclusion (considering also the previous literature), and I used it to establish if social exclusion was partially transitory, and to study eventual dependence paths that exclusion might generate. Note that my analysis proposes new approaches to study social exclusion and offers fresh empirical evidence on social exclusion dynamics in Spain from 1994 to 2000 (using ECHP data).I define social exclusion as a multidimensional dynamic process leading to a state of individual exclusion relative to the rest of the society where the individual lives in. Social exclusion at a point in time is defined as the impossibility to achieve some relevant functionings. The choice of an index able to adequately measure exclusion is not easy. I have proposed to use a special case of the multidimensional generalization of the Foster-Green-Thorbecke index. The main reason has been that this index fulfils a set of axiomatic properties (Bourguignon and Chakravarty, 2003) and it is able to operazionalize Sen's capability approach. Note that this index is also adequate to capture the multidimensionality of social exclusion and gives us information about the intensity of exclusion.I have performed a detailed analysis of social exclusion mobility following the relative approach and using transition matrices (two-stage analysis). The main advantages of using transition matrices are the following: first, two-stage analysis provides a simple picture of the "movement" of the individuals among the specific social exclusion classes and, second, it is shown to be robust to data contamination. This kind of analysis have shown that social exclusion was partially a transitory phenomenon. I have also focused on the causes leading to social exclusion process. I did find that an individual experiencing exclusion today was more likely to experience exclusion tomorrow due to both observed and unobserved individual heterogeneity and true state of dependence. The analysis has been done estimating a dynamic non-linear panel data model. I have used the random effects approach, and I have applied the solution proposed by Wooldridge (2002) to solve the initial condition problems. This approach have shown evidence of the importance of both true state dependence and observed/unobserved heterogeneity.

The increasing need for more natural human machine interfaces has generated intensive research work directed toward designing and implementing natural speech enabled systems. The Spectrum of speech recognition applications ranges from understanding simple commands to getting all the information in the speech signal such as words, meaning and emotional state of the user. Because it is very hard to constrain a speaker when expressing a voice-based request, speech recognition systems have to be able to handle (by filtering out) out of vocabulary words in the users speech utterance, and only extract the necessary information (keywords) related to the application to deal correctly with the user query. In this thesis, we investigate an approach that can be deployed in keyword spotting systems. We propose a confidence measure feedback module that provides confidence values to be compared against existing Automatic Speech Recognizer word confidences. The feedback module mainly consists of a soft computing tool-based system using fuzzy Gaussian mixture models to identify all English phonemes. Testing has been carried out on the JULIUS system and the preliminary results show that our feedback module outperforms JULIUS confidence measures for both the correct spotted words and the falsely mapped ones. The results obtained could be refined even further using other type of confidence measure and the whole system could be used for a Natural Language Understanding based module for speech understanding applications.

Background: The rehabilitation of older persons is often complicated by increased frailty and medical complexity – these in turn present challenges for the development of health information systems. Objective investigation and comparison of the effectiveness of geriatric rehabilitation services requires information systems that are comprehensive, reliable, valid, and sensitive to clinically relevant changes in older persons. The Functional Independence Measure is widely used in rehabilitation settings – in Canada this is used as the central component of the National Rehabilitation Reporting System of the Canadian Institute of Health Information. An alternative system has been developed by the interRAI consortium. We conducted a literature review to compare the development and measurement properties of these two systems and performed a direct empirical comparison of the operating characteristics and validity of the FIM motor and the ADL items on the PAC in a sample of older adults receiving rehabilitation. Methods: For the first objective english language literature published between 1983 (initial development of the FIM) and 2008 was searched using Medline and CINAHL databases, and the reference lists of retrieved articles. Additionally, attention was paid to the ability of the two systems to address issues particularly relevant to older rehabilitation clients, such as medical complexity, comorbidity, and responsiveness to small but clinically meaningful improvements. For the second objective we used Rasch analysis and responsiveness statistics to investigate and compare the instruments dimensionality, item difficulty, item fit, differential item function, number of response options and ability to detect clinically relevant change. Results: The majority of FIM articles studied inpatient rehabilitation settings; while the majority of interRAI/MDS articles focused on nursing home settings. There is evidence supporting the reliability of both instruments. There were few articles that investigated the construct validity of the interRAI/MDS. The analysis showed that the FIM may be slightly more responsive than the PAC, especially in the MSK patients. However, both scales had similar limitations with regards the large ceiling effect and many unnecessary response options. Conclusions: Additional psychometric research is needed on both the FIM and MDS, especially with regard to their use in different settings and ability to discriminate between subjects with functional higher ability.

In this paper we consider optimal design of experiments in the case of correlated observations, when no replications are possible. This situation is typical when observing a random process or random field with known covariance structure. We present a theorem which demonstrates that the computation of optimum exact designs corresponds to solving minimization problems in terms of design measures. (author's abstract) / Series: Forschungsberichte / Institut für Statistik