<p> The study seeks to derive a spatial preference model for urban places, based on a farm population's spatial choices of urban places for retail expenditure. Specifically, the study tests for the similarity in households' preference orderings of urban places, and finds a high degree of similarity. This is achieved using a model with only two simple variables, namely town population and distance to town. Tests indicate no major variable is omitted in the model. The information on households' preference orderings enables the aggregate preference order to be defined. </p> <p> Tests are inconclusive as to whether households also assign worths to urban places which indicate their awareness of the amount by which different places are preferred. </p> <p> The second part of the analysis seeks to determine if different types of households have different spatial preferences. Differences are revealed in the value different types attach to the locational convenience of places. Farm households with members working off the farm reveal a lower than average preference for convenient shopping places. Smaller, more affluent households display a stronger preference for convenient locations and a lower preference for large towns than less affluent households with young children. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>A few aspects of aircraft noise were evaluated. These were (i) methods of subjective evaluations, (ii) effects of equalization and (iii) the effects of cognitive aspects.</p><p>In the first paper, sorting algorithms were used instead of conventional paired comparison method in order to reduce the number of pairs in the evaluation of subjective judgments. The quick sorting algorithm method revealed more than 99% correlation coefficient with paired comparison method although the method used N*log(N) evaluations instead of N(N-1)/2.</p><p>In the second paper, equalization effects on perception were evaluated in two steps, first with stationary aircraft sounds and second with non-stationary aircraft sounds.</p><p>The first experiment examined the effects of stationary sound segments respect to three different angle positions of the aircrafts relative to the observer (78.7°, 90° & 101.3°), two different SNR conditions (sounds having original broadband plus tonal components versus control broadband sounds having no tonal components) and two different flight conditions (arrival and take-off). Subjects were asked to scale five perceptual attributes (loudness, annoyance, hardness, power and pitch) using Borg CR100 scale. The angle condition showed highly significant effects on annoyance and hardness. Maximal effects were found at an angle of 78.7°. The SNR revealed a significant impact on loudness, power and pitch.</p><p>The second experiment analyzed the effects of tonal components and the problem of appropriate equalization. The spectrum of the signals was modified in two steps (buzz-saw, isolated BPF tone). Further EPNL-equalization, A-, B-, C-, D- and spectral broadband equalizations were applied to the synthesized sounds. Annoyance, loudness, hardness and pitch in the isolated tone conditions showed significantly stronger effects than the buzz-conditions on the perceived judgments. The EPNL-equalization led to a lower degree of differentiation between the spectral conditions compared to B- and C-level equalization.</p><p>In the third paper, the effects of aircraft sounds on children’s cognitive performance were investigated. Impact of aircraft noise on children cognition was found significantly higher in reading comprehensions than in basic mathematics and problem solving tests. It seems children are very sensitive to the modifications in the aircraft noise but further studies are necessary to compliment such a finding.</p>

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Researchers in human resource management (HRM) have long been concerned with the attraction and retention of organizational members (Breaugh, 1992; Rynes, 1991; Vroom, 1966). However, as the U.S. work force has become more diverse (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000), the need to consider how issues of cultural diversity are related to the recruitment process has become increasingly important. For example, although past research has investigated relations among individuals' values, personality, and job choice preferences, no research has examined the job choice trade-off preferences of culturally diverse individuals. Moreover, researchers have not examined explicit job choice trade-off preferences involving job and organizational factors, even though expectancy theory-based models of recruitment implicitly suggest that individuals make trade-offs among valent job and organizational factors. Therefore, the purpose of the current research was to examine the relations among individuals' (a) cultural values (power distance, Protestant Ethic-earnings, Protestant Ethic-upward striving), (b) ethnicity (European-American, Hispanic-American), and (c) their job choice trade-off preferences for organizational prestige over pay using Thurstone's (1927, 1931) law of comparative judgment method. Study 1 served as a pilot of the procedure and measures. Based on the results of Study 1, changes were made to improve reliability of measures prior to Study 2. Study 2 tested hypothesized relations among cultural values, ethnicity, and job choice trade-off preferences for organizational prestige over pay. Results from Study 2 showed that power distance cultural values were related positively to job choice trade-off preferences for organizational prestige over pay and that Protestant Ethic-earnings cultural values were related negatively to job choice trade-off preferences for organizational prestige over pay. In addition, Hispanic-Americans were more likely than European-Americans to prefer job choice trade-offs for organizational prestige over pay. However, Protestant Ethic-upward striving cultural values were unrelated to job choice trade-off preferences for organizational prestige over pay. Moreover, ethnicity was unrelated to power distance cultural values, Protestant Ethic-earning cultural values, or Protestant Ethic-upward striving cultural values. Study results suggest that including cultural values and ethnicity in future recruitment research can enhance the understanding of individuals' job choice preferences and provide practitioners with information to attract multicultural job applicants.

Historically, table tennis blades have been subject to few changes. Apart from the introduction of a few new materials, such as carbon fibre, resulting from rule changes in the sport, the pace of change has been slow. This project is based on three cases containing potential rule changes to the regulations of the sport regarding the construction of blades. Furthermore, the sport, its user’s needs, and potential new materials to implement have been investigated, resulting in the development of a series of prototypes. A total of 21 prototypes have been used with the aim of improving the control properties of the blade, which along with speed and spin are considered the most important playing characteristics in a table tennis stroke. The overall result from user tests indicates that three of the prototypes possess interesting properties which should be investigated further, out of which two are presented in this report. These prototypes consist of a prototype where a layer of the fibrous material Vectran is included, and a prototype where a layer consists of a honeycomb structure made of the material Nomex, and a third prototype that upon request from the company has been decided to be excluded from the report. Finally, recommendations for further development of these prototypes are described. / Stommar för bordtennisracketar är en produktkategori som historiskt sett genomgått små förändringar. Bortsett från att ett antal nya material, såsom kolfiber, introducerats till följd av olika regeländringar har förändringstakten varit långsam. Detta projekt har utgått från tre projektcase innehållande potentiella regelförändringar av bordtennisens regelverk avseende bordtennisstommens tillåtna konstruktion. Här har sporten, dess användarbehov samt potentiella nya material undersökts vilka prototyper tillverkats utefter. Sammanlagt har 21 prototyper tagits fram vilka främst avser förbättra racketstommens kontrollegenskaper, vilket tillsammans med fart och skruv anses vara de viktigaste spelegenskaperna hos racketen i slagmomentet. Det sammantagna resultatet från användartesterna visar att ett antal av prototyperna besitter intressanta spelegenskaper. Av dessa har tre valts ut vilka rekommenderas att undersökas vidare, varav två presenteras i denna rapport. Detta handlar om en stomme där ett lager av fibermaterialet Vectran används, en stomme där ett lager utgörs av en honeycombstruktur av Nomex, samt en tredje stomme som på företagets önskemål beslutats att ej inkluderas i rapporten. Till sist beskrivs rekommendationer för vidare arbete med dessa koncept.

A few aspects of aircraft noise were evaluated. These were (i) methods of subjective evaluations, (ii) effects of equalization and (iii) the effects of cognitive aspects. In the first paper, sorting algorithms were used instead of conventional paired comparison method in order to reduce the number of pairs in the evaluation of subjective judgments. The quick sorting algorithm method revealed more than 99% correlation coefficient with paired comparison method although the method used N*log(N) evaluations instead of N(N-1)/2. In the second paper, equalization effects on perception were evaluated in two steps, first with stationary aircraft sounds and second with non-stationary aircraft sounds. The first experiment examined the effects of stationary sound segments respect to three different angle positions of the aircrafts relative to the observer (78.7°, 90° &amp; 101.3°), two different SNR conditions (sounds having original broadband plus tonal components versus control broadband sounds having no tonal components) and two different flight conditions (arrival and take-off). Subjects were asked to scale five perceptual attributes (loudness, annoyance, hardness, power and pitch) using Borg CR100 scale. The angle condition showed highly significant effects on annoyance and hardness. Maximal effects were found at an angle of 78.7°. The SNR revealed a significant impact on loudness, power and pitch. The second experiment analyzed the effects of tonal components and the problem of appropriate equalization. The spectrum of the signals was modified in two steps (buzz-saw, isolated BPF tone). Further EPNL-equalization, A-, B-, C-, D- and spectral broadband equalizations were applied to the synthesized sounds. Annoyance, loudness, hardness and pitch in the isolated tone conditions showed significantly stronger effects than the buzz-conditions on the perceived judgments. The EPNL-equalization led to a lower degree of differentiation between the spectral conditions compared to B- and C-level equalization. In the third paper, the effects of aircraft sounds on children’s cognitive performance were investigated. Impact of aircraft noise on children cognition was found significantly higher in reading comprehensions than in basic mathematics and problem solving tests. It seems children are very sensitive to the modifications in the aircraft noise but further studies are necessary to compliment such a finding.

National soccer teams are currently ranked by soccer's governing body, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Although the system used by FIFA is thorough, taking into account many different factors, many of the weights used in the system's calculations are somewhat arbitrary. It is investigated here how the use of a statistical model might better compare the teams for ranking purposes. By treating each game played as a pairwise comparison experiment and by using the Bradley-Terry model as a starting point some suitable models are presented. A key component of the final model introduced here its ability to differentiate between friendly matches and competitive matches when determining the impact of a match on a teams ranking. Posterior distributions of the rating parameters are obtained, and the rankings and results obtained from each model are compared to FIFA's rankings and each other.

This paper develops a new approach to the analysis of longitudinal paired comparison data, where comparisons of the same objects by the same judges are made on more than one occasion. As an alternative to other recent approaches to such data, which are based on Kalman filter- ing, our approach treats the problem as one of multivariate multinomial data, allowing dependence terms between comparisons over time to be incorporated. The resulting model can be fitted as a Poisson log-linear model and has parallels with the quadratic binary exponential distribution of Cox. An example from the British Household Panel Survey illustrates the approach. (author´s abstract) / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

Purpose: To evaluate sound quality preferences of participants wearing hearing aids with different strengths of nonlinear frequency compression (NFC) processing versus no NFC processing. Two analysis methods, one without and one with a qualifier as to the magnitude of preferences, were compared for their percent agreement to differentiate a small difference in perceived sound quality as a result of applied NFC processing. Research Design: A single-blind design was used with participants unaware of the presence or strength of NFC processing (independent variable). The National Acoustic Laboratories-Nonlinear 2 (NAL-NL2) prescription of amplification was chosen because audibility is intentionally not prescribed in the presence of larger sensorineural hearing loss thresholds. A lack of prescribed audibility, when present, was deemed an objective qualifier for NFC. NFC is known to improve the input bandwidth available to listeners when high-frequency audibility is not otherwise available and increasing strengths of NFC were examined. Experimental condition 3 (EC3) was stronger than the manufacturer default (EC2). More aggressive strengths (e.g., EC4 and EC5), however, were expected to include excessive distortion and even reduce the output bandwidth that had been prescribed as audible by NAL-NL2 (EC1). Study Sample: A total of 14 male Veterans with severe high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss. Data Collection and Analysis: Participant sound quality preference ratings (dependent variable) without a qualifier as to the magnitude of preference were analyzed based on binomial probability theory, as is traditional with paired comparison data. The ratings with a qualifier as to the magnitude of preference were analyzed based on the nonparametric statistic of the Wilcoxon signed rank test. Results: The binomial probability analysis method identified a sound quality preference as well as the nonparametric probability test method. As the strength of NFC increased, more participants preferred the EC with less NFC. Fourteen of 14 participants showed equal preference between EC1 and EC2 perhaps, in part, because EC2 showed no objective improvement in audibility for six of the 14 participants (42%). Thirteen of the 14 participants showed no preference between NAL-NL2 and EC3, but all participants had an objective improvement in audibility. With more NFC than EC3, more and more participants preferred the other EC with less NFC in the paired comparison. Conclusions: By referencing the recommended sensation levels of amplitude compression (e.g., NAL-NL2) in the ear canal of hearing aid wearers, the targeting of NFC parameters can likely be optimized with respect to improvements in effective audibility that may contribute to speech recognition without adversely impacting sound quality. After targeting of NFC parameters, providers can facilitate decisions about the use of NFC parameters (strengths of processing) via sound quality preference judgments using paired comparisons.

<p><p><em>Making a decision today is quite important, especially in companies, where the consequences can bring benefits or costs. Sometimes the decisions to be made are complex and we need to evaluate many criterions that can involve several factors. In those cases, it is not easy to have a good overview of all choices and for this reason it is important to have a system that helps us in making complex decisions, when it is not possible to evaluate all the alternatives manually. This thesis describes different algorithms and tools that can aid in the process of making decisions. Based on the review of existing tools a new web based application is proposed. The new tool, Decision Maker, uses both the full Analytical Hierarchical Process approach and Chainwise Paired Comparisons method to evaluate different alternatives.</em></p></p>