This study is a revision of the Marital Inventories so that both self-perception and perception of other data can be collected. The revised inventory, titled the Couples Inventories, was administered to a population of 183 couples comprised mainly of university students from communities across the United States. From the collected data, principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation was used to analyze the items addressing couple communication . This study analyzed data from self-perception and perception of other, as well as including the variables of the respondent's age and gender as a test for structural equivalence. As a test of reliability Theta, a special case of Cronbach Alpha, was calculated for the identified factors. The major findings of this study were: (a) perception of other is critical to the understanding of relationship communication; (b) structural equivalence enables researchers to identify those items that have utility for heterosexual couples at various ages; (c) openness, understanding, problem solving, and conflict management are crucial dimensions of communication; (d) openness is comprised of at least two dimensions; namely, general openness and emotional openness; and (e) understanding is unidimensional as opposed to a continuum ranging from understanding to misunderstanding.

Learning style refers to the cognitive, physiological, emotional, environmental, sociological, and perceptual manner in which people learn. In order to provide students with an optimal learning environment, it is necessary to match instruction with students' learning style. To do this, student learning style must be assessed by a learning style instrument. Of the learning style instruments that are currently available, most do not have much evidence of reliability and validity. Additionally, evidence that does exist is weak. Therefore, more psychometric data are needed regarding these instruments. This study provided psychometric evidence for six popular learning styles instruments, including the Learning Style Inventory, the Productivity Environmental Preferences Survey, the Learning Styles Profile, the Grasha-Riechmann's Student Learning Style Scale, the Edmonds Learning Style Identification Exercise, and the Group Embedded Figures Test. Test-retest reliability was found to be good for the Group Embedded Figures Test and moderate for all other instruments. Internal structure validity of the instruments was good, indicating that the instruments do measure unique learning style constructs. However, convergent and discriminant validity evidence indicates that the instruments either do not measure the same constructs, or measure the learning style constructs in different ways.

The goal of this study is to investigate the predictive ability of less data intensive but widely accepted methods to estimate mobility and reliability measures. Mobility is a relatively mature concept in the traffic engineering field. Therefore, many mobility measure estimation methods are already available and widely accepted among practitioners and researchers. However, each method has their inherent weakness, particularly when they are applied and compared with real-world data. For instances, Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) Curves are very popular in static route choice assignment, as part of demand forecasting models, but it is often criticized for underperforming in congested traffic conditions where demand exceeds capacity. This study applied five mobility estimation methods (BPR Curve, Akcelic Function, Florida State University (FSU) Regression Model, Queuing Theory, and Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) Facility Procedures) for different facility types (i.e. Freeway and Arterial) and time periods (AM Peak, Mid-Day, PM Peak). The study findings indicate that the methods were able to accurately predict mobility measures (e.g. speed and travel time) on freeways, particularly when there was no congestion and the volume was less than the capacity. In the presence of congestion, none of the mobility estimation methods predicted mobility measures closer to the real-world measure. However, compared with the other prediction models, the HCM procedure method was able to predict mobility measures better. On arterials, the mobility measure predictions were not close to the real-world measurements, not even in the uncongested periods (i.e. AM Peak and Mid-Day). However, the predictions are relatively better in the AM and Mid-Day periods that have lower volume/capacity ration compared to the PM Peak period. To estimate reliability measures, the study applied three products from the Second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) projects (Project Number L03, L07, and C11) to estimate three reliability measures; the 80th percentile travel time index, 90th percentile travel time index, and 95th percentile travel time index. A major distinction between mobility estimation process and reliability estimation process lies in the fact that mobility can be estimated for any particular day, but reliability estimation requires a full year of data. Inclusion of incident days and weather condition are another important consideration for reliability measurements. The study found that SHRP2 products predicted reliability measures reasonably well for freeways for all time periods (except C11 in the PM Peak). On arterials, the reliability predictions were not close to the real-world measure, although the differences were not as drastic as seen in the case of arterial mobility measures.

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Introduction: Owing to its importance in the development and evaluation of health policies in favor of the general population, there is currently a greater interest in the study of well-being. Therefore, a valid and reliable measurement of well-being is necessary. In this context, this study evaluated the evidence of validity based on the internal structure, reliability, and factor invariance by sex of the General Well-Being Index (who-5 wbi). Materials and Methods: A total of 499 university students (female = 271; male = 228) from the city of Trujillo, Peru, participated in the study. A confirmatory factor analysis, reliability by internal consistency, and factor invariance by sex were performed using a multigroup analysis. Results: The confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the 5-dimensional model with 5 correlated errors of items 1 and 4 presented a good fit (χ² = 9.667 [gl = 4], p > 0.05; χ²/gl = 2.416; cfi = 0.994; rmsea = 0.053 [ic90% 0.006–0.097]; srmr = 0.018). In addition, acceptable reliability (ω = 0.758) and factor invariance by sex were reported. Conclusion: The who-5 wbi demonstrated empirical evidence in favor of validity based on internal structure, reliability of scores, and factor invariance that allow for a useful and rapid instrument for measuring subjective well-being in university students.

A Remotely Operated underwater Vehicle (ROV) faces many problems regarding dependability and most issues come during launch and recovery. The thesis looks at finding what dependability aspects shall be considered when developing a modular ROV to come up with recommendations for a system, together with a more reliable method of launching and recovering ROV’s. The area is important since it has been shown that there exists a gap in the market regarding multipurpose and dependable ROV’s. The method used in the thesis is a case study starting with a literature study to get a solid foundation to be able to conduct interviews. The interviews were structured as a semi-structured interview and the data were used to be able to find the important dependability aspects to give out a recommendation of a ROV system. The result shows the different dependability aspects that should be emphasised to ensure a safe system: Reliability, safety, confidentiality, maintainability, availability and integrity. From the recommendation, a simulation was conducted to test the stabilizing force to increase the reliability of launch and recovery. Furthermore, the different tests show that the amount of motion can be lowered by using thruster force as well as adding weight to the system. From the results it can be determined that the use of tether tension as a stabilizing factor is possible by using Dynamic Positioning (DP) to control the ROV’s thrusters to increase reliability.

The paper considers statistical inference for R = P(X < Y) in the case when both X and Y have generalized gamma distributions. The maximum likelihood estimators for R are developed in the case when either all three parameters of the generalized gamma distributions are unknown or when the shape parameters are known. In addition, objective Bayes estimators based on non informative priors are constructed when the shape parameters are known. Finally, the uniform minimum variance unbiased estimators (UMVUE) are derived in the case when only the scale parameters are unknown.

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Smart grid initiatives are becoming more and more achievable through the use of information infrastructures that feature peer-to-peer communication, monitoring, protection and automated control. The analysis of smart grid operation requires considering the reliability of the cyber network as it is neither invulnerable nor failure free. The objective of this dissertation is to categorize interdependencies between cyber and power networks and propose mathematical evaluation models to calculate the reliability of the power network when considering failures of the cyber network. This study categorizes interdependencies between cyber and power networks into direct and indirect. In this research direct interdependencies among cyber-power networks is studied and the concept of state mapping is proposed to map the failures in the cyber network to the failures of the power network. The impact of indirect interdependencies on the reliability of power system is different and more complicated than that of direct interdependencies. In this dissertation, various aspects of smart monitoring, as an application of indirect interdependency, are discussed and a mathematical model to assess its impact on power grid reliability is proposed. Based on a multiple-state Markov chain model, the failure and repair rates of power components with and without monitoring provisions are determined and compared. In addition, to model indirect interdependencies between cyber and power networks, the concept and formulations of state updating are proposed to update the probability of states due to failures in the cyber network. Furthermore, in order to evaluate the impact of both direct and indirect cyberpower interdependencies on the reliability indices, two optimization models are introduced to maximize the data connection in the cyber network and minimize the load shedding in the power network.

The purpose of this study was to determine the reliability of sixteen balance tests in individuals with Down syndrome (DS). The following tests were performed on 21 participants with DS, aged 5-31 years of age; standing test on firm and soft surfaces with the eyes opened and closed, a balance subset of the Bruininks-Oseretsky test, full turn, timed-up-and-go test, forward reach, and sit-to-stand. Each participant completed all 16 assessments twice on one day and then again on a subsequent day for a total of four trials. Seven tests had reliability coefficients greater than 0.55; one-leg stand on floor (0.76), on balance beam with eyes opened (0.62) and eyes closed (0.69), heel-to-toe walk on balance beam (0.63), straight line walk on floor (0.57), and CGS on firm (0.63) and soft (0.86) surfaces with eyes opened. We recommend these seven tests for use in clinical and non clinical settings.