La thèse a pour ambition de confronter un grand classique du droit des sociétés, la notionmême de société, avec les exigences confinant parfois au « vampirisme financier » de cetarchétype du capitalisme financier qu’est un « Leveraged Buy Out ». Un LBO se traduit, sousl’angle du droit des sociétés, par la constitution d’un ensemble sociétaire composé de deuxsociétés : celle qui achète (la holding de reprise) et celle qui est achetée (la « cible »). Pouraussi importante que soit la seconde, c’est à l’étage supérieur, celui de la holding de reprise,que sont cristallisées les spécificités du montage et leur incidence sur la notion de société.Cette incidence est mesurée au niveau du fond (Partie I) et de la forme (Partie II) de lasociété qui sert de pierre angulaire au montage de LBO.PARTIE I : L’INCIDENCE DU LBO SUR LE FOND DE LA SOCIETELe fond de la société étudiée a été entendu comme ce qu’elle a d’essentiel et qui lui donneconsécutivement son identité. La démonstration a été conduite à partir de deux aspectsfondamentaux de cette société: ce qu’elle fait, c'est-à-dire son activité (Titre I) et ce qu’elleest, c’est à dire sa qualification (Titre II). Ces deux aspects reflètent bien, dans un LBO, latéléologie de la holding de reprise, cette dimension fonctionnelle de la société qu’a simagistralement mise en lumière l’« Ecole de Rennes ». La holding de reprise a en effet unedouble finalité : elle organise à la fois une opération sociétaire (une prise de contrôle aveceffet de levier) et une opération contractuelle (un « contrat d’investissement » entendu commeun contrat de prêt d’argent), la seconde étant clairement l’accessoire de la première. Cettepremière partie conduit l’auteur à proposer de renouveler l’étude de certaines questionsmajeures en droit des sociétés, comme celle de la nature juridique de l’acquisition et de ladétention du contrôle d’une société commerciale (la « cible ») ou encore celle de laqualification proposée en doctrine de « contrat d’investissement » d’une société (telle laholding de reprise) dont le capital est ouvert à des professionnels du capital investissement.PARTIE II : L’INCIDENCE DU LBO SUR LA FORME DE LA SOCIETELe mot forme doit être ici compris dans une double acception. Il est d’abord retenu dans sonsens taxinomique comme faisant référence aux différents types de sociétés qui peuvent êtreutilisés pour jouer le rôle d’habit juridique de la holding de reprise. Il vise également, defaçon subséquente et liée, l’aboutissement du travail du spécialiste du droit des sociétés4cherchant, une fois un type de société choisi, à en utiliser toutes les potentialités pour adapterle type choisi aux besoins spécifiques du montage de LBO. La raison de l’incidence du LBO àce niveau tient à la nécessité de rechercher un maximum de liberté contractuelle pourpermettre cette adaptation de la forme au fond. Il s’agit en effet de pouvoir choisir dans lapalette des instruments offerts par le droit des sociétés ceux qui permettront d’organiser leplus efficacement possible d’une part, l’effet de levier attendu sous l’angle juridique del’interposition de la holding de reprise entre le repreneur et la « cible », d’autre part lepartenariat entre ce repreneur et les financiers qui participent au « tour de table » de cetteholding. La démonstration est conduite d’abord pour un montage national (Titre I) puis pourun montage transfrontalier (Titre II). / The dissertation means to focus on confronting a classic of corporate law, the very notion ofcompany, with the requirements often bordering on « financial vampirism » related to thisarchetype of financial capitalism, the « Leveraged Buy Out ». A LBO embodies, from thepoint of view of corporate law, the setting-up of a grouping made up of two companies, one :the take-over holding company, the other : the one that is being bought, the « target ».However important the latter may be, it is at the upper level, the take-over holding company,that the specific features of the financial set-up and their impact on the notion of company arebest given a definite form. The impact is measured according to the content (Part I) and theform (Part II) of the company which acts as the cornerstone in the financial set-up of a LBO.PART I : THE IMPACT OF THE LBO ON THE CONTENT OF THE COMPANYThe content of the company studied here, has been grasped as what constitutes its essential,defining consequently its identity. The demonstration has been conducted from thefundamental aspects of the company : what it does, i-e its operations (Heading I) and itsnature, i.e its qualification (Heading II). The two aspects well evince, in a LBO, theteleology of the take-over holding company, that functional dimension of the company, sobrilliantly expounded by the « Rennes School ». Indeed the take-over holding company has adouble purpose : organizing both a share-holding operation (a take-over with leverage) and acontractual operation (an investment contract conceived as a loan contract), the latter beingclearly incidental to the former. This first part lead us to propose renewing the study of somemajors questions related to corporate law such as the legal nature of the control acquisitionand holding of a trading company (the « target ») as well as that of the qualification putforwardas doctrine of « investment contract » of a company (such as a take-over holdingcompany) with a capital open to professionals of capital investment.PART II. THE IMPACT OF THE LBO ON COMPANY STRUCTUREThe word form should here be understood in tis double meaning. It is first used in itstaxinomic sense, referring to the different company structures that can be applied to play therole of legal outfit for the take-over holding company. It also aims, subsequently and closelylinked, at the outcome of the corporate law specialist’s task, once the company’s structure has6been chosen, endeavouring to use all its inherent capacities for growth in order to adapt thechosen structure to the specific requirements entailed in the setting-up of the LBO.The reason of the LBO’s impact at his stage stems for the need for seeking the maximumcontractual freedom allowing the adaptation of structure to content. It is indeed a matter ofbeing able to choose in range of instruments made available by corporate law, those allowingto organize as efficiently as possible on the one hand, the legally expected leverage performedin the take-over holding company’s intervention between the rescuer and the financiers takingpart in the take-over holding company’s investor round. The demonstration is first conductedfor a financial set-up at national level (Heading I) then cross-border (Heading II).

The most important fact in the mobile industry at the moment is that demand for wireless services will continue to expand in the coming years. Therefore, it is vital to find more spectrums through cognitive radios for the growing numbers of services and users. However, the spectrum reallocations, enhanced receivers, shared use, or secondary markets-will not likely, by themselves or in combination, meet the real exponential increases in demand for wireless resources. Network operators will also need to re-examine network architecture, and consider integrating the fibre and wireless networks to address this issue. This thesis involves driving fibre deeper into cognitive networks, deploying microcells connected through fibre infrastructure to the backbone LTE networks, and developing the algorithms for diverting calls between the wireless and fibre systems, introducing new coexistence models, and mobility management. This research addresses the network deployment scenarios to a microcell-aided cognitive network, specifically slicing the spectrum spatially and providing reliable coverage at either tier. The goal of this research is to propose new method of decentralized-to-distributed management techniques that overcomes the spectrum unavailability barrier overhead in ongoing and future deployments of multi-tiered cognitive network architectures. Such adjustments will propose new opportunities in cognitive radio-to-fibre systematic investment strategies. Specific contributions include: 1) Identifying the radio access technologies and radio over fibre solution for cognitive network infrastructure to increase the uplink capacity analysis in two-tier networks. 2) Coexistence of macro and microcells are studied to propose a roadmap for optimising the deployment of cognitive microcells inside LTE macrocells in the case of considering radio over fibre access systems. 3) New method for roaming mobiles moving between microcells and macrocell coverage areas is proposed for managing spectrum handover, operator database, authentication and accounting by introducing the channel assigning agent entity. The ultimate goal is to reduce unnecessary channel adaptations.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / Since 1989 the study of democratic civil military relations has undergone a revival of the formation of new theory. These concepts deal with civilian control of armed forces at a national level. Since after the end of the Cold War, the European employment of military forces within a multinational framework became a regularity, it is now pertinent to ask whether and how these concepts fit at the international level. The construction of Europe and the rise of new security challenges raises the issue of democratic civil military relations in the European Union. The present thesis analyses classical and new theories of civil military relations and applies these to the current issue of security policy and the formation of strategy for a supra-national European Union. / Lieutenant Colonel, Austrian Army

Master of Science / Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Todd Easton / This thesis introduces the Bay Crane Scheduling (BCS) problem and related BCS algorithm. The purpose of this algorithm is to optimize the assignment of jobs to overhead cranes as well as the sequence in which each crane performs its assigned jobs. This problem is unique from other Overhead Crane Scheduling (OCS) problems through its increased complexity. Up until now, OCS problems involve a set number of cranes operating in a single common area, referred to as a bay, and are unable to pass over each other. The BCS problem involves a varying number of active cranes operating in multiple bays. Each crane is allowed to move from one bay to the next, through specific locations called bridges. This is crucial to completing certain “special” jobs that require two cranes operating in unison to transport an item. The BCS algorithm employs two continuous time simulations in conjunction with an initial job-assignment algorithm and a Simulated Annealing (SA) improvement heuristic in order to minimize the non-productive crane time, while avoiding overloading any crane. To the extent of the author’s knowledge, this is the first time a continuous time simulation has been used to model an OC system. The BCS algorithm was originally developed for a large manufacturing facility, and when it was tested against the facility’s current scheduling methods, it shows a 20% improvement in the overall active crane time required to complete equivalent set of jobs. This improved efficiency is crucial to the manufacturing facility being able to increase its production rate without the addition of new cranes. In addition, BCS is statistically shown to be superior to the current strategy. The results from BCS are substantial and practitioners are encouraged to utilize BCS’s methodologies to improve other overhead crane systems.

This study is a descriptive research project which examines a purposeful census of the best selling children's books for 0-8 year olds in the United States in 2003. This cross-sectional study of these social artifacts evaluates the extent to which the ideologies of the environmental movement have been inculcated into culture. It evaluates how the environment is represented in children’s literature and the extent to which children's literature meets the goals of environmental education. Through narrative semeiotic analysis of the themes, as well as the manifest (text) and latent (pictures) content, varying degrees of pro and antienvironmental ideologies reflected by these representations emerged. Analytic induction revealed that these representations reflected ideologies of human domination over nature. In addition, in most cases, the representation of the environment did not reflect or meet the goals of environmental education. This finding sheds light on the role children's books play in the environmental socialization of America's youth.

<p>Mitotic genome instability can occur during the repair of double-strand breaks (DSBs) in DNA, which arise from endogenous and exogenous sources. Studying the mechanisms of DNA repair in the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae has shown that Homologous Recombination (HR) is a vital repair mechanism for DSBs. HR can result in a crossover event, in which the broken molecule reciprocally exchanges information with a homologous repair template. The current model of double-strand break repair (DSBR) also allows for a tract of information to non-reciprocally transfer from the template molecule to the broken molecule. These “gene conversion” events can vary in size and can occur in conjunction with a crossover event or in isolation. The frequency and size of gene conversions in isolation and gene conversions associated with crossing over has been a source of debate due to the variation in systems used to detect gene conversions and the context in which the gene conversions are measured. </p><p>In Chapter 2, I use an unbiased system that measures the frequency and size of gene conversion events, as well as the association of gene conversion events with crossing over between homologs in diploid yeast. We show mitotic gene conversions occur at a rate of 1.3x10-6 per cell division, are either large (median 54.0kb) or small (median 6.4kb), and are associated with crossing over 43% of the time. </p><p>DSBs can arise from endogenous cellular processes such as replication and transcription. Two important RNA/DNA hybrids are involved in replication and transcription: R-loops, which form when an RNA transcript base pairs with the DNA template and displaces the non-template DNA strand, and ribonucleotides embedded into DNA (rNMPs), which arise when replicative polymerase errors insert ribonucleotide instead of deoxyribonucleotide triphosphates. RNaseH1 (encoded by RNH1) and RNaseH2 (whose catalytic subunit is encoded by RNH201) both recognize and degrade the RNA in within R-loops while RNaseH2 alone recognizes, nicks, and initiates removal of rNMPs embedded into DNA. Due to their redundant abilities to act on RNA:DNA hybrids, aberrant removal of rNMPs from DNA has been thought to lead to genome instability in an rnh201Δ background. </p><p> In Chapter 3, I characterize (1) non-selective genome-wide homologous recombination events and (2) crossing over on chromosome IV in mutants defective in RNaseH1, RNaseH2, or RNaseH1 and RNaseH2. Using a mutant DNA polymerase that incorporates 4-fold fewer rNMPs than wild type, I demonstrate that the primary recombinogenic lesion in the RNaseH2-defective genome is not rNMPs, but rather R-loops. This work suggests different in-vivo roles for RNaseH1 and RNaseH2 in resolving R-loops in yeast and is consistent with R-loops, not rNMPs, being the the likely source of pathology in Aicardi-Goutières Syndrome patients defective in RNaseH2.</p> / Dissertation

[pt] Nos ní­veis atuais de globalização, fluxo de informações e sensibilidade das economias e empresas em todo o mundo, e onde os mercados financeiros,os processos, operações e dinâmicas organizacionais são cada vez mais padronizados, torna-se cada vez mais importante a precisão dos indicadores e dados que são utilizados na avaliação de empresas para a percepção quanto as suas situações financeiras por meio da observação de indicadores de capital de giro, em especial, em novos mercados e paí­ses e para as empresas globalizadas. Este trabalho proprõe um modelo de avaliação de situação econômico-financeiro de empresas baseado em uma analise conjunta da aplicação dos clássicos e tradicionais Indicadores de Liquidez com o Modelo Dinâmico de Capital de Giro, estudado e desenvolvido por Michel Fleruiet. O trabalho propõe sua aplicação em empresas de quatro paí­ses da America Latina, Argentina, Brasil, Chile e México. Testes aplicados sobre as Demonstrações Financeiras das empresas dos setores de tecnologia e energia representando cem por cento das empresas de capital aberto destes setores nos paí­ses revelaram que e benéfica a utilização conjunta dos modelos de avaliação de situação econômico-financeiro e de autofinanciamento. / [en] On the current globalization levels, information flow and economies and companies sensibility all over the world, and where financial markets, the procedures, operatives and organizational dynamics are at each more standardized, becomes as more important the indicators precision and the data that are used evaluating companies to perceive regarding its financial situations by the observation of the working capital indicators, specially over new markets and countries and for globalized companies. This study intend to propose an evaluation model for financial-economic companies situation based on a jointly application of the classics and traditional Liquid Indicators with the Dynamic Working Capital Model studied and developed by Michel Fleuriet. The studies propose to apply it over four Latin America countries, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Such trials accomplished over Financial Statements of technology and energy companies representing one hundred percent of open market capital companies of these segments on countries, revealed that it's beneficial the use of both models of evaluation of the financial-economic situation and auto- sufficiency jointly.

Jovens passam por grandes mudanças no período de transição entre educação e trabalho. Expectativas educacionais não bem-sucedidas e altos níveis de desemprego de jovens são indicativos de dificuldades encontradas por esses na passagem para a vida adulta. Enquanto muitas políticas são continuamente propostas no Brasil para tentar amenizar possíveis efeitos negativos dessas mudanças, há poucas pesquisas empíricas para auxiliar os tomadores de decisão. Esta tese, formada por dois ensaios complementares, pretende analisar os fatores que afetam a transição entre a escola e o trabalho e propor ideias de como auxiliar no desenho de políticas efetivas para os adolescentes. Para tanto, foi utilizada a Pesquisa Transição da Escola para o Trabalho (School-to-Work Transition Survey), realizada pela Organização Internacional do Trabalho em 2013. A base de dados apresenta questões retrospectivas em relação às características socioeconômicas dos pais, permitindo mensurar a mobilidade entre gerações para os jovens - o que possibilitou a elaboração do primeiro ensaio dessa tese. Os resultados obtidos evidenciam uma elevada mobilidade entre gerações, principalmente quando os pais tinham níveis mais baixos de educação. Já para analisar os retornos da educação sobre os rendimentos, segundo objetivo do primeiro ensaio, foram estimadas equações de rendimentos pelo modelo de seleção de Heckman. A educação dos jovens e dos pais mostrou ter impacto relevante sobre o rendimento. No segundo ensaio, avaliou-se a satisfação no trabalho, que até o momento tem sido pouco estudada em países em desenvolvimento. A relação entre as capacidades profissionais dos indivíduos e as demandas do mercado de trabalho ainda é pouco compreendida. Foi então realizada uma análise da satisfação profissional dos jovens de 15 a 29 anos. Ao contrário dos estudos já realizados sobre o tema satisfação profissional, a análise aqui desenvolvida se concentrou apenas nos jovens trabalhadores. Seguindo a literatura existente, utilizou-se o modelo próbite ordenado, sendo a variável dependente o grau de satisfação profissional dos jovens. Observou-se um efeito negativo sobre a satisfação do excesso de qualificação dos jovens. A magnitude desse efeito variou entre indivíduos empregados e aqueles que trabalham por conta própria. Considerados os resultados de ambos os ensaios, tem-se evidências de que houve uma melhora na qualificação dos jovens brasileiros, muitos deles apresentando escolaridade maior do que a de seus pais. Todavia, essa qualificação não está associada, necessariamente, a uma melhoria na satisfação dos jovens com o trabalho principal. Assim, os resultados encontrados poderão chamar a atenção dos formuladores de políticas públicas e de organizações não governamentais para a importância, não apenas da criação de novos postos de trabalho, mas também da criação de oportunidades de emprego com qualidade para os jovens brasileiros. / Youths suffer major changes in the transition period between education and work. Unsuccessful educational expectations and high levels of youth\'s unemployment are indicative of difficulties encountered by young people as they move into adult life. While many policies are continually being proposed in Brazil to try to mitigate these changes, there is little empirical research to assist policy makers. This dissertation aimed to analyze the factors that affect the transition between school and work and to propose ideas on how to design effective policies for youth. To do so, we used the School-to-Work Transition Survey carried out by the International Labor Organization in 2013. The database presents retrospective questions regarding the socioeconomic characteristics of the parents, allowing us to measure the mobility between generations from 15 to 29 years of age. The results obtained in the first paper show a huge mobility between generations, especially when parents had lower levels of education. To analyze the returns to education on wages, the income equations were estimated by Heckman selection model. The education of youth and parents had a great impact on earnings. The second paper evaluated the question of job satisfaction, which has a small number of studies in developing countries. The adjustment between individuals\' occupational skills and the labor market demand is still poorly understood. The objective was to carry out a comparative analysis of the professional satisfaction of young people aged 15 to 29 years old. Contrary to previous studies that address the subject of job satisfaction, the analysis developed here focused only on young workers. Following the existing literature, an ordered probit model was used, with the dependent variable being the degree of job satisfaction among young people. A negative and significant effect of over education was observed, the magnitude of the effect varies for individuals employees and those who are self-employed. These results show that there was an improvement in the qualification of Brazilian youths, many of whom presented higher educational levels than their parents. However, such qualification is not necessarily associated with improved job satisfaction for young people. Thus, the results found here may attract the attention of public policy makers as well as non-governmental organizations to the importance of not only creating new jobs, but also creating quality employment opportunities for Brazilian youths.

A representação é uma forma de participação política que pode ativar uma variedade de formas de controle e de supervisão por parte dos cidadãos. Em vez de um esquema de delegação, a representação é um processo político que conecta sociedade e instituições. Na democracia representativa o povo soberano delega poder ao representante, mas tem também o poder negativo de destituí-lo. Para que esse poder negativo possa ser exercido o governante deve prestar contas ao povo, o qual, após debate público, reconduzirá ou não o governante ao poder. Para que essa responsabilização ocorra, é fundamental a existência da transparência. Em federações descentralizadas, a transparência não depende apenas das ações do governo central, visto que os entes subnacionais ganham autonomia política, administrativa e financeira e, por isso, a descentralização é vista como uma segunda condição essencial para a consolidação da democracia. No Brasil, a regulação dos conteúdos informacionais das peças que compõem o ciclo orçamentário tem sido definido por legislações provenientes do ente central, o que, em tese, levaria a uma transparência orçamentária parecida entre os entes subnacionais brasileiros. No entanto, não é isso que ocorre na prática, sobretudo quando olhamos para os indicadores de transparência divulgados no Brasil. Se os índices não apontam para uma normalidade entre os números, quais os fatores determinam a transparência do ciclo orçamentário nos estados subnacionais brasileiros? Essa pergunta guiou a elaboração deste trabalho, o qual foi realizado por meio de uma pesquisa descritiva. Inicialmente, foi elaborado, com base nas recomendações internacionais (FMI, OCDE e OBP), um indicador de transparência orçamentária para o ciclo orçamentário brasileiro. De posse dessas informações, foram realizadas entrevistas com os dois estados classificados como mais similares e os dois classificados como mais dissimilares. Essa classificação ocorreu por meio da técnica estatística de Multimentional Scaling (MDS) não métrico, uma vez que as variáveis eram binárias. As entrevistas foram realizadas com servidores da área de planejamento e/ou controle dos estados subnacionais e com conselheiros dos tribunais de contas. Os resultados indicam que no contexto subnacional brasileiro, fatores fiscais e políticos contribuem para a melhoria da transparência. Os fatores fiscais foram confirmados parcialmente nas entrevistas, dado que apenas Déficit e Dívida foram apontados pelos respondentes, enquanto as variáveis receita corrente e superávit não foram citadas. As variáveis políticas (competição do governador e partido político) não foram indicadas como determinantes da transparência no Brasil. Para os entrevistados essas variáveis não fazem diferença no ambiente institucional brasileiro devido às características do processo eleitoral e da forma de governo, que ocorre por meio de coalizões entre partidos sem alinhamento ideológico e com bases definidas localmente. Além disso, outras determinantes foram destacas pelos entrevistados, as quais ainda não haviam sido identificadas na literatura internacional, como: influência das agências avaliadoras e de rating, crises institucionais e financeiras, vontade política e inovação governamental, enforcement das legislações, pressão da imprensa, decisões colegiadas, influência das instituições de controle, coordenação de ações e burocracia especializada. Esses resultados apontam que quanto mais mecanismos institucionais existirem para pressionar os governos a agirem sob o brilho da luz, mais democrática e menos desigual poderá vir a ser a sociedade. / The representation is a form of political participation that can activate a variety of control forms and oversight by citizens. Instead of a scheme of delegation, representation is a political process that connects society and institutions. In representative democracy the sovereign people delegate power to the representative, but they also have the negative power to remove it. In order for this negative power can be exercised the ruler must report to the people which, after public debate, will conduct or not the ruler to power again. In order that accountability occur, it is essential the existence of transparency. In decentralized federations, transparency depends not only on the actions of the central government, since sub national entities gain political, administrative and financial autonomy in these models and, therefore, decentralization is seen as a second essential condition for the consolidation of democracy. In Brazil, the regulation of the informational content of the pieces that make up the budget cycle has been defined by legislation from the central one, which, in theory, would lead to a similar budget transparency among Brazilian sub national entities. However, this is not what happens in practice, especially when we look at the indicators of transparency disclosed in Brazil. If the scores do not show normality between the numbers, what factors determine the transparency of the budget cycle in Brazilian sub national states? This question guided the preparation of this work, which was accomplished through a descriptive research. Initially it was developed, based on international recommendations (IMF, OECD and OBP), an indicator of budget transparency for the Brazilian budget cycle. With this information, we performed interviews with the two states classified as more similar and the two rated as more dissimilar. This classification was made through statistical technique of nom metric Multimentional scaling (MDS), once the variables were binary (presence or absence). Interviews were conducted with the area of planning and / or control of sub national states and counselors of courts of account. The results indicate that in the Brazilian sub national context, as pointed out by the international literature, fiscal and political factors contribute to improving transparency. The tax factors were partially confirmed in interviews since only deficit and debt were cited by respondents. The variables current revenue and surplus were not even mentioned. Political variables (governor competition and political party) were not included as determinants of transparency in Brazil. Respondents said that these variables make no difference in the Brazilian institutional environment due to the characteristics of the electoral process and the form of government, which occurs through coalitions between parties without ideological alignment and bases locally defined. In addition, other determinants were highlighted by the respondents, which didn\'t have yet been identified in the international literature, as influence of rating agencies, institutional and financial crises, political will and government innovation, law enforcement, media pressure, collective decisions, control agencies influence, coordination of actions and specialized bureaucracy. These results indicate that the more institutional mechanisms exist to pressure governments to act under the shining of light more democratic and less unequal could become society

Thesis advisor: Ina V.S. Mullis / This dissertation describes the foundation for maintaining TIMSS’ 20 year trend measurements with the introduction of a new computer- and tablet-based mode of assessment delivery—eTIMSS. Because of the potential for mode effects on the psychometric behavior of the trend items that TIMSS relies on to maintain comparable scores between subsequent assessment cycles, development efforts for TIMSS 2019 began over three years in advance. This dissertation documents the development of eTIMSS over this period and features the methodology and results of the eTIMSS Pilot / Item Equivalence Study. The study was conducted in 25 countries and employed a within-subjects, counterbalanced design to determine the effect of the mode of administration on the trend items. Further analysis examined score-level mode effects in relation to students’ socioeconomic status, gender, and self-efficacy for using digital devices. Strategies are discussed for mitigating threats of construct irrelevant variance on students’ eTIMSS performance. The analysis by student subgroups, similar item discriminations, high cross-mode correlations, and equivalent rankings of country means provide support for the equivalence of the mathematics and science constructs between paperTIMSS and eTIMSS. However, the results revealed an overall mode effect on the TIMSS trend items, where items were more difficult for students in digital formats compared to paper. The effect was larger in mathematics than science. An approach is needed to account for the mode effects in maintaining trend measurements from previous cycles to TIMSS 2019. Each eTIMSS 2019 trend country will administer the paper trend booklets to an additional nationally representative bridge sample of students, and a common population equating approach will ensure the link between paperTIMSS and eTIMSS scores. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation.