This study used protocol analysis to identify key variables in the venture capital investment decision-making process. The study used a fictional business plan which was based on six actual business plans. This fictional business plan was presented to ten venture capitalists who were asked to review it to decide whether to interview the investee. The protocols obtained from these subjects were analyzed to determine patterns within the subjects' review. The sections of the business plan which were commonly reviewed first were the deal structure, the executive summary, and the management section. The management section was used by the greatest number of subjects. The market section was used the greatest number of times. The data were also organized by type of operators used in each subject's protocols. Information Search/Retrieval operators were most common, followed by Task Structuring/Set Goal operators. When classified into the four major categories of Task Structuring/Set Goal, Information Acquisition, Analytical/ Inferential, and Choice operators, Analytical/Inferential operators were used most frequently. Choice operators were least used. The phrases were analyzed by the relevant section in the business plan. The market received the greatest number of references, followed by references to the product and to management. However, when references to the income statement and balance sheet were combined as phrases relevant to the financial statements, the financial statements were referred to more frequently than the product or the people. The subjects appeared to use an unidentified choice program within which certain models could be identified as subroutines. The subjects used an elimination-by-aspects model to screen the business plan. If the business plan met the criteria within the elimination-by-aspects model of the subject, the subject used an additive/nonlinear model for the remainder of the review. The results of this study indicate that financial statements provide information important in the venture capital investment decision-making process. This finding is contrary to the advice usually given to potential venture capital investees.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / Cryptographic protocols provide security services through the application of cryptography. When designing a cryptographic protocol, the requirements are, often, specified informally. Informal specification can lead to incorrect protocols from misinterpreting the security requirements and environmental assumptions. Formal tools have been shown to reduce ambiguity. In this paper, a cryptographic protocol, called the Secure Open Distribution Protocol (SODP), is developed to provide authentication services for open source information. A formal development process is proposed to aid in the design of the SODP. The Strand Space method has been selected as the formal mechanism for specifying requirements, architecting a protocol design, and assuring the correctness of the protocol. First, the informal authentication requirements are modeled as agreement properties. Next, Authentication Tests, a Strand Space concept, are introduced to aid in the design of the SODP. Finally, a formal proof is constructed to assure that the SODP has satisfied all requirements. The result of the development process proposed in this paper is a cryptographic protocol that can be used to securely distribute open source information. Also, the Strand Space method is demonstrated as a viable option for the formal development of a cryptographic protocol. / Civilian, Federal Cyber Corps

This research studies the security challenges in IoT devices. At first, security challenges have been described and then specifically the security of communication protocols in the IoT has been addressed. Finally, among different communication protocols, ZigBee and Z-Wave protocols have been chosen for this study. The criterion for choosing these two protocols is the level of security they provide for IoT devices to protect them against unauthorized access and hacking. Security, frequency, power consumption and data rate are the characteristics that have been discussed in the review of these two protocols. In the end, a comparison of the various features of these two protocols clarified that the security of IoT devices in each of these protocols depends on the type of the IoT device, the required range and other requirements, however, in most cases the ZigBee protocol showed more security than Z-Wave.

Volunteer organizations face two challenges not found in non-volunteer organizations: recruiting and retaining volunteers. While social media use is increasing amongst individuals, its use and effectiveness for volunteer recruitment and retention by volunteer organizations is unknown. The dissertation reports the results of three studies to investigate this important question. Using a mixed-methods approach, it addressed the dual nature of social media and its effectiveness by including volunteer organizations and social media users. This dissertation found that although volunteer organizations are not using social media effectively, they could virtualize requirements of the recruitment process by focusing on relatable events instead of sterile marketing. This dissertation contributes to information systems literature by extending the post-acceptance model of IS continuance to show that social media mediates volunteer continuance. It further contributes by revealing a potential new area of research, i.e., the use and effectiveness of online social media for volunteer organizations.

<p>The process that consumers go through while buying something is called consumer buying process and has been studied for a long time. Three stages of the Five-Stage Model (Kotler, 2006) provide a starting point for analysis in this paper and the reason of using this model is to make collected data more structured and easier for understanding. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze costumer buying process online.The method for data collection applied in this study is called “think-aloud” that means participants are verbalizing their screen activity and thoughts during the process of observation. The results of this research show that consumer buying process online is a complex process that is influenced by the amount and intensity of information received during the process as well as consumer knowledge and experience on the area of problem. The sequence of the stages proposed by the research model can vary depending on the preferences of consumer and readiness to make a decision.</p>

This thesis is about diagrammatic reasoning and error-finding in conceptual modeling diagrams. Specifically, the differences of the cognitive strategies and behaviors of notation-familiar participants versus domain-familiar participants working on conceptual modeling diagrams are inspected. The domain-familiar participants are experienced in the topic being represented, but they do not have any formal training in software development representations. On the other hand, the notation-familiar participants are educated in software representations, but unfamiliar with the topic represented. The main experiment and the follow-up experiment also aim to study how some properties of diagrams affect the error-finding behaviors. The participant groups&rsquo / performances in the main experiment are investigated and compared by the analysis of verbal protocol data and eye movement data. The combination of the two different methods enhances detailed analyses. In the follow-up experiment, only eye movement data is involved to evaluate how some properties of diagrams affect problem-solving. By means of both experiments, it is concluded that diagrammatic complexity has a negative effect on reasoning whereas the degree of causal chaining improves diagrammatic reasoning. In the main experiment, some differences in the diagrammatic reasoning processes between the groups are observed, too. The notation-familiar participants are observed to be more successful in error-finding although they are unfamiliar with the topic. This study underlines the interaction of cognitive science and software engineering by integrating eye movement data, verbal protocol analysis and performance data into the cognitive inspection of software engineering notations.

This thesis reports a study of the relationship of CAD use in designing and creativity through a Creative Behaviours Framework. This thesis provides a description of the establishment of a framework for gathering empirical evidence to support the analysis of links between CAD and creativity. The Creative Behaviours Framework consists of seven categories including novelty, appropriateness, motivation, fluency, flexibility, sensitivity, and insightfulness. The framework was developed from published literature largely relating to the area of cognitive psychology. The research reports findings concerning the use of this framework in analysing the use of CAD at Loughborough University and involved four postgraduates, two finalist undergraduates, and the researcher s own design project. Multiple data gathering methods including interviews, observations, protocol analysis, and design diaries have been used in this study to provide data reliability and validity. The results demonstrate the occurrence of creative behaviours in relation to the use of CAD when designing. Most of the categories had a significant number of occurrences observed and identified in the case studies using the data gathering methods (in particular protocol analysis and design diaries). However, novelty was only reported from the design diaries in Case studies 1 and 2. Some findings that linked the emergence of xvi creative characteristics of product outcomes with CAD usage were also established from data analysis of the design diaries. Hence, a key research output is the development of a framework which enabled researchers to observe and identify creative behaviours whilst CAD was used in designing. This framework has shown its reliability by also capturing creative behaviours in other than CAD activities such as 2D sketching and 3D sketch modelling. The findings from Case studies 1 and 2 indicated that creative behaviours were consistently identified during the observations of these design modelling activities. It shows that the Creative Behaviours Framework is not exclusively useful to observe creative behaviours during CAD use, but can also be applied in identifying these behaviours in other designing activities. An online questionnaire explored whether this framework could also be useful in wider application such as in supporting teachers in developing effective classroom and studio practice to encourage the emergence of creative behaviours by their students. The research study (using case studies and paper questionnaires) was undertaken with students of the Design and Technology Department, Loughborough University and the findings could be biased to this particular population. Hence, the online questionnaire was carried out with Malaysian CAD users to provide broader feedback. Although there was a small number of responses received from Malaysia, the data still provided a useful foundation to make the comparison between the UK and Malaysian CAD users perceptions about the relationship between creativity, in particular creative behaviours and the use of CAD in designing.

The current study compared participants’ ability to perform tasks using two nutrition labels: a control Nutrition Facts table of the current Canadian format (n=64), and an experimental label (n=64), identical to the control label with the exception of a footnote explaining how to interpret percent daily values. A 25% subset of participants answered questions using a think aloud technique, and data was analyzed using content analysis. The main outcome measured was ability to interpret percentages correctly, with ability to compare, define and manipulate information as secondary outcomes. No significant differences were seen in ability to perform tasks between the experimental and control conditions for any outcomes. As determined by chi square tests, higher performance was associated with higher education, being male, and report of previous Nutrition Facts table use. Verbal protocol analysis identified that interpretation of percentages was based on the meal, food type, and comparison to other foods.

The process that consumers go through while buying something is called consumer buying process and has been studied for a long time. Three stages of the Five-Stage Model (Kotler, 2006) provide a starting point for analysis in this paper and the reason of using this model is to make collected data more structured and easier for understanding. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze costumer buying process online.The method for data collection applied in this study is called “think-aloud” that means participants are verbalizing their screen activity and thoughts during the process of observation. The results of this research show that consumer buying process online is a complex process that is influenced by the amount and intensity of information received during the process as well as consumer knowledge and experience on the area of problem. The sequence of the stages proposed by the research model can vary depending on the preferences of consumer and readiness to make a decision.

This thesis is focused on exploring marking and grading in higher education. Using a phenomenological approach 26 interviews were undertaken with a heterogeneous sample of health academics at four universities. The sample included novice lecturers with two years or less experience in the academy to those with academic careers spanning more than 20 years. Two interview methods were utilised, Protocol Analysis (PA) and Cognitive Interviewing (CI). Protocol Analysis enables close contact with the marking and grading, in the moment, whilst Cognitive Interviewing is a novel method for exploring lecturer practices in higher education. Analysis was completed by applying a modified framework analysis to both data sets, facilitating synthesis of the two series of research findings. A wealth of rich data was gathered which resulted in close exploration of marking and grading practices, with the production of corroboratory evidence for issues previously identified on these phenomena. Close connection as an insider practitioner researcher has enabled close exploration and the gaining of new insights into practice, resulting in the identification of previously unexplored areas. My original contributions to knowledge in this area are: identifying the messiness of marking and grading and troublesome knowledge, the ‘rubric paradox’, importance of communities of practice, dual identity of health academics, working environments, experience recast as expertise, and using current interview techniques (PA and CI) for supporting continuing professional development. This thesis develops these themes suggesting ways in which they could impact upon contemporary marking and grading practice.