In recent years, there have been incidents which decreased people's trust in some organizations and authorities responsible for ratings and accreditation. For a few prominent examples, there was a security breach at Equifax (2017), misconduct was found in the Standard & Poor's Ratings Services (2015), and the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (2022) validated some of the low-performing schools as delivering higher standards than they actually were. A natural solution to these types of issues is to decentralize the relevant trust management processes using blockchain technologies. The research problems which are tackled in this thesis consider the issue of trust in reputation for assessment and review credibility at different angles, in the context of blockchain applications. We first explored the following questions. How can we trust courses in one college to provide students with the type and level of knowledge which is needed in a specific workplace? Micro-accreditation on a blockchain was our solution, including using a peer-review system to determine the rigor of a course (through a consensus). Rigor is the level of difficulty in regard to a student's expected level of knowledge. Currently, we make assumptions about the quality and rigor of what is learned, but this is prone to human bias and misunderstandings. We present a decentralized approach that tracks student records throughout the academic progress at a school and helps to match employers' requirements to students' knowledge. We do this by applying micro-accredited topics and Knowledge Units (KU) defined by NSA's Center of Academic Excellence to courses and assignments. We demonstrate that the system was successful in increasing accuracy of hires through simulated datasets, and that it is efficient, as well as scalable. Another problem is how can we trust that the peer reviews are honest and reflect an accurate rigor score? Assigning reputation to peers is a natural method to ensure correctness of these assessments. The reputation of the peers providing rigor scores needs to be taken into account for an overall rigor of a course, its topics, and its tasks. Specifically, those with a higher reputation should have more influence on the total score. Hence, we focused on how a peer's reputation is managed. We explored decentralized reputation management for the peers, choosing a decentralized marketplace as a sample application. We presented an approach to ensuring review credibility, which is a particular aspect of trust in reviews and reputation of the parties who provide them. We use a Proof-of-Stake based Algorand system as a base of our implementation, since this system is open-source, and it has a rich community support. Specifically, we directly map reputation to stake, which allows us to deploy Algorand at the blockchain layer. Reviews are analyzed by the proposed evaluation component using Natural Language Processing (NLP). In our system, NLP gauges the positivity of the written review, compares that value to a scaled numerical rating given, and determines adjustments to a peer's reputation from that result. We demonstrate that this architecture ensures credible and trustworthy assessments. It also efficiently manages the reputation of the peers, while keeping reasonable consensus times. We then turned our focus on ensuring that a peer's reputation is credible. This led us to introducing a new type of consensus called "Proof-of-Review". Our proposed implementation is again based on Algorand, since its modular architecture allows for easy modifications, such as adding extra components, but this time, we modified the engine. The proposed model then provides a trust in evaluations (review and assessment credibility) and in those who provide them (reputation credibility) using a blockchain. We introduce a blacklisting component, which prevents malicious nodes from participating in the protocol, and a minimum-reputation component, which limits the influence of under-performing users. Our results showed that the proposed blockchain system maintains liveliness and completeness. Specifically, blacklisting and the minimum-reputation requirement (when properly tuned) do not affect these properties. We note that the Proof-of-Review concept can be deployed in other types of applications with similar needs of trust in assessments and the players providing them, such as sensor arrays, autonomous car groups (caravans), marketplaces, and more.

No / Reactivity to assessment has attracted recent attention in the brief alcohol intervention literature. This systematic review sought to examine the nature of change in alcohol consumption over time in control groups in brief intervention studies. Primary studies were identified from existing reviews published in English language, peer-reviewed journals between 1995 and 2005. Change in alcohol consumption and selected study-level characteristics for each primary study were extracted. Consumption change data were pooled in random effects models and meta-regression was used to explore predictors of change. Eleven review papers reported the results of 44 individual studies. Twenty-six of these studies provided data suitable for quantitative study. Extreme heterogeneity was identified and the extent of observed reduction in consumption over time was greater in studies undertaken in Anglophone countries, with single gender study participants, and without special targeting by age. Heterogeneity was reduced but was still substantial in a sub-set of 15 general population studies undertaken in English language countries. The actual content of the control group procedure itself was not predictive of reduction in drinking, nor were a range of other candidate variables including setting, the exclusion of dependent drinkers, the collection of a biological sample at follow-up, and duration of study. Further investigations may yield novel insights into the nature of behaviour change with potential to inform brief interventions design.

This dissertation examines the effect of accountability and client risk on auditor efficiency and effectiveness during an audit review task. I considered two types of accountability. The first type is outcome accountability, which represents the type of accountability in the current audit review process. The second type of accountability is process accountability, which is not currently utilized in the audit review process. I also examined two levels of client risk (high and low) because client risk has been shown to impact efficiency and effectiveness of the audit review process. An internet-based experimental instrument was utilized for this study. Participants were practicing auditors. Findings indicate that process accountability improved performance by exhibiting both an increase in identification of errors and a decrease in likelihood of agreement with the preparer. Findings also show that process accountability decreases efficiency by increasing overall time to complete the study and the amount of information reviewed. These results suggest that process accountability, the act of documenting the process used to perform a task, may reduce the chances of audit failure, making the reduction in efficiency acceptable. I also find that participants in the process accountability and high risk groups may have experienced information overload. Both high client risk and process accountability have been shown to increase attention to information and time spent on a task. A decrease in errors identified by individuals in this group when compared to individuals in the process accountability and low risk group may indicate information overload. Also, attrition rates and followup responses from participants who did not complete the study indicate that information overload may have been an issue for participants in the process accountability/high risk group. / Ph. D.

This study contributes to the performance measurement (PM) literature by providing validated measures of PM system use and increased understanding of the impact of PM use on organizational outcomes. The purpose of this study was to articulate and test the relationships between PM system use, organizational learning, and organizational performance by taking into account the effects of PM-related technical factors (namely, PM system maturity and review process (RP) maturity). The concept of PM use was explored through the examination of its underlying processes, as reflected in the literature and two case studies, and a set of practices delineating PM use processes were proposed. Following a scale development approach, a measurement instrument of PM use was developed and validated with empirical data collected through a web-based questionnaire. The results from factor analysis showed the need to revise the initial set of PM use practices into five dimensions: monitoring, problem-finding, problem-solving, validating causal relationships, and validating improvement actions. Additionally, new measures were developed to assess PM and RP maturity factors. The factor analysis results identified four maturity variables: managed RP, optimized RP, PM design and PM implementation. Data from 216 managers participating in RP meetings were used to test the hypothesized relationships via partial least square (PLS). The results provide varying support for the hypotheses defined. First, the results show that monitoring directly impacts organizational performance while problem-finding, problem-solving and validating causal relationships indirectly impact organizational performance through shared vision and team learning. These indirect effects were positive in some cases and negative in others, depending on the direction of the relationship between the use variable and the organizational learning variable. Second, validating improvement actions did not influence organizational outcomes. Finally, the only moderating effect found was managed RP on the relationship between validating causal relationships and financial performance. Because of the weak support for moderating effects, an alternative model was proposed, exploring these maturity variables as antecedents of PM use. The results provided substantial support for this alternate model. Practical implications and areas for future research are also identified and discussed. / Ph. D.

An auditor performing analytical review must typically diagnose material variances of observed client data from his/her own expectations. The auditor may utilize a decision aid to help in generating potential explanations for a variance; it has, however, the capacity to provide many more explanations than are possible using other means. Under the circumstances of budgetary constraints and limited cognitive load for beginning an information search with these explanations, the auditor may consider the lengthy list and arrive at a more manageable sub-list of the most probable explanations. In doing so, the auditor either eliminates those explanations that are less likely or includes those that are more likely into a reduced list for further consideration. While the goal under either approach is the same-to reduce the list-studies in psychology have shown that those including will reduce the list to a much greater extent than those eliminating. If the auditor begins an information search with this reduced list of explanations, then whether the auditor uses inclusion or elimination may have effectiveness and efficiency implications for the remainder of the analytical review process. The auditor must also contend with risk in the audit environment, which also may influence the manner in which the auditor reduces the lengthy list of explanations. A risky audit environment is generally related to heightened auditor skepticism and increased audit effort, as predicted by the audit risk model (SAS 47, AICPA 1983). Each of these translates into the desire to pursue a greater number of plausible explanations in a high risk environment than in a low risk environment. Therefore, an auditor would be expected to reduce a decision-aid-provided list of explanations to a lesser degree in a high risk environment than a low risk environment. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the occurrence of a goal framing effect at varied levels of client risk. Using a two-way between subjects design, auditors in this study either eliminated or included explanations from a decision-aid-provided list in a low risk or high risk analytical review setting. As suggested by the goal framing theory, auditors who eliminated concluded with significantly more explanations than those who included. Furthermore, as suggested by the audit risk model, auditors in a high risk environment concluded with significantly more explanations than auditors in a low risk environment. Because previous auditing literature provides that auditor conservatism, which is heightened in periods of high risk, often mitigates biases and heuristics found in the general decision making or psychology literature, it was also predicted that in the high risk scenario, the influence of high risk in enlarging the set of explanations would overcome the influence of the inclusion goal framing in reducing the set of explanations. No support was found for this interaction. The results of this study have implications for the implementation of decision aids in practice. This study advises that in various client risk settings, auditors evaluating a lengthy decision-aid-provided list of explanations by inclusion may arrive at a significantly smaller number of explanations than by elimination. Given that the subsequent step of analytical review-information search-is planned according to what the auditor believes are the plausible hypotheses, goal framing may have an impact on the overall efficiency and effectiveness of analytical review, in both high and low risk client scenarios. / Ph. D.

This dissertation comprises two manuscripts formatted for publication, preceded by a brief introduction to the dissertation project. The first manuscript addresses the recent history and development of peer observation in the United States and synthesizes the body available peer observation scholarship. Five fundamental elements of peer observation (design, community, control, training, reflection) are put forth as a nexus at which meaningful and formative peer observation can be undertaken. A selection of empirically based methods for conducting peer observation is also presented. The second manuscript is a mixed-methods descriptive study of the five fundamentals of peer observation. Three academic departments at a large land-grant university were identified, via questionnaire, as having programs of peer observation that aligned with attributes of the five fundamentals. These academic departments participated in individual case studies designed to bring-about a description of the five fundamentals as they were and were not manifest in authentic university/college contexts. / Ph. D.

Social presence has drawn great attention in the last three decades. A large number of studies attempted to prove that social presence exerted an effect on distance learning through including more interaction. This integrative review provided a comprehensive summary of current studies on social presence, identified problems in measuring social presence, and evaluated the effects of social presence on learning. Data were collected from 189 social presence studies in the area of distance education from 1976 to 2012. Data were analyzed qualitatively followed by a quantitative meta-analysis. This study revealed that social presence was still illusive and difficult to define. Due to its ambiguity, many doubts exist related to the measurement of social presence. The results of this study suggest future researchers should be cautious when advocating the importance of social presence in distance learning. / Ph. D.

As a prerequisite for all adult learners in life-long learning, self-directed learning has been constantly discussed since the early 1960s. However, in what manner research operationalizes the concepts and what similarities occur across the empirical studies and theoretical studies are still ambiguous. The purpose of this study is to employ an integrative literature review to investigate and disentangle various interpretations of self-directed learning by identifying how the topic is defined and what competencies and strategies are needed for a highly self-directed learner. This is a six-phase study, including: 1) problem formulation; 2) data collection; 3) problem re-formulation; 4) data evaluation; 5) data collection; and 6) presentation of the findings. This study provided a comprehensive perspective of self-directed learning in a dynamically expanding process to include multifaceted interpretations of the topic and advanced research in self-directed learning in an updated, enriched learning environment. Specifically, the researcher updated the evidence for self-directed learning to date, identified all of the potential dimensions of self-directed learning that distinguish a highly-directed self-directed learner and the related instructional strategies, and made suggestions for the future direction of research on the topic. / Ph. D.

Yes / The landscape for health professional education is changing. The higher education (HE) sector faces the challenge of delivering high quality education at a time of financial constraint and increased emphasis on the student as a consumer. But universities also face new expectations from a health sector that is increasingly recognising both the interdependency between the quality of health care and the quality of education and training and the potential for education to support innovation. Although the differences in the HE and health policy context across the four UK home nations are increasingly significant, these are common challenges for all 85 members of the UK Council of Deans of Health. ... The literature review throws up many interesting findings. It is striking that there is relatively little research evidence on assessment or practice oriented innovative teaching and learning interventions, nationally or internationally. So too, the gaps revealed in the evidence base around the culture of innovation are something that we will pursue as a project group with a further literature review in 2014. However, the literature review reveals a rich body of research, covering areas as diverse as simulation, social media, drama and peer learning. Our hope is that the findings will help colleagues across the UK to track down the research evidence behind existing innovative practice and that it will stimulate many new ideas as we seek to continually improve the way we teach. Professor Brian J. Webster, Assistant Dean, Edinburgh Napier University and Chair, Innovation Project Advisory Group. / Full text will be available in the Bradford Scholars Repository on receipt of permissions from the Council of Deans of Health.

To determine the accuracy of radiographers red dot or triage of accident and emergency (A&E) radiographs in clinical practice. MATERIALS AND METHODS Eligible studies assessed radiographers red dot or triage of A&E radiographs in clinical practice compared with a reference standard and provided accuracy data to construct 2×2 tables. Data were extracted on study eligibility and characteristics, quality, and accuracy. Pooled sensitivities and specificities and chi-square tests of heterogeneity were calculated. RESULT Three red dot and five triage studies were eligible for inclusion. Radiographers' red dot of A&E radiographs in clinical practice compared with a reference standard is 0.87 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.85¿0.89] and 0.92 (0.91¿0.93) sensitivity and specificity, respectively. Radiographers' triage of A&E radiographs of the skeleton is 0.90 (0.89¿0.92) and 0.94 (0.93¿0.94) sensitivity and specificity, respectively; and for chest and abdomen is 0.78 (0.74¿0.82) and 0.91 (0.88¿0.93). Radiographers' red dot of skeletal A&E radiographs without training is 0.71 (0.62¿0.79) and 0.96 (0.93¿0.97) sensitivity and specificity, respectively; and with training is 0.81 (0.72¿0.87) and 0.95 (0.93¿0.97). Pooled sensitivity and specificity for radiographers without training for the triage of skeletal A&E radiographs is 0.89 (0.88¿0.91) and 0.93 (0.92¿0.94); and with training is 0.91 (0.88¿0.94) and 0.95 (0.93¿0.96). CONCLUSION Radiographers red dot or triage of A&E radiographs in clinical practice is affected by body area, but not by training.