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Recent research supports the benefit of students’ construction of relevance through writing about the connection of content to their life. However, most such research defines relevance narrowly as utility value – perceived instrumentality of the content to the student’s career goals. Furthermore, the scope of phenomenological and conceptual dimensions that characterizes students’ perceptions of relevance remains largely unexplored in the literature. Rather, scholars have equated relevance with specific constructs such as utility, value or interest, which in turn has yielded a narrow conceptualization of relevance, usually constrained to a single construct, most commonly, utility. Whereas prior research certainly provides important insights into some of the features of relevance, it falls short of portraying the full scope of meanings that perceived relevance might take. To address this gap in the literature, this mixed-methods dissertation study explored the conceptual and phenomenological landscape of perceived relevance by employing a broad multidimensional conception of relevance to examine (a) the dimensional variability of students’ relevance constructions; and (b) the individual characteristics and the motivational and identity processes underlying differences in their constructions of relevance. The context of this study was an Institute of Educational Science (IES)-funded semester-long multi-modal intervention project that aimed to promote learning, motivation and achievement in an undergraduate introductory biology course. One module within the intervention involved students’ engagement in four relevance writing assignments, each focusing on a central biology concept in the course. The following dissertation employed data collected as part of this intervention project. This study involved coding and analyzing students’ relevance writing about two biology concepts—evolution (n = 50) and organismic diversity (n = 38)—with the purpose of characterizing dimensions underlying undergraduate students’ relevance constructions of central biology concepts and comparing these constructions across the two different biology concepts. Exploratory qualitative analysis procedures were used in the first phase of this investigation to develop an initial coding framework via intensive content analyses of students’ relevance writing products on evolution. A second phase of qualitative content analyses of students’ relevance writing about organismic diversity led to further development of the coding framework and comparative analyses of written products across the two concepts. Findings supported the dimensional variability of relevance constructions including the self-aspect connected to the content, the kind of connection made, and the type of perceived value, with some notable differences between the two biology concepts. Finally, the findings suggested that the meaningful connection engendered by the relevance construction experience originates primarily in the experience of understanding one’s self within the relation—understanding the self in relation to the relevant content; and that understanding some content in relation to a component of one’s identity may be secondary to the disclosure of the self. This dissertation explored the ways in which the relevance construction experience is a vital, dynamic process of identity formation. It is the findings from these intensive analyses that are reported in detail in this dissertation along with an in-depth discussion of the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of this content-specific, multidimensional, identity-based conception of relevance. / School Psychology

While perceived relevance is considered a fundamental component of adaptive learning, the experience of relevance and its conceptual definition have not been well described. The mixed-methods research presented in this dissertation aimed to clarify the conceptual meaning of relevance by focusing on its phenomenological experience from the students' perspective. Following a critical literature review, I propose an identity-based model of perceived relevance that includes three components: a contextual target, an identity target, and a connection type, or lens. An empirical investigation of this model that consisted of two general phases was implemented in four 9th grade-biology classrooms. Participants in Phase 1 (N = 118) completed a series of four open-ended writing activities focused on eliciting perceived personal connections to academic content. Exploratory qualitative content analysis of a 25% random sample of the student responses was used to identify the main meaning-units of the proposed model as well as different dimensions of student relevance perceptions. These meaning-units and dimensions provided the basis for the construction of a conceptual mapping sentence capturing students' perceived relevance, which was then applied in a confirmatory analysis to all other student responses. Participants in Phase 2 (N = 139) completed a closed survey designed based on the mapping sentence to assess their perceived relevance of a biology unit. The survey also included scales assessing other domain-level motivational processes. Exploratory factor analysis and non-metric multidimensional scaling indicated a coherent conceptual structure, which included a primary interpretive relevance dimension. Comparison of the conceptual structure across various groups (randomly-split sample, gender, academic level, domain-general motivational profiles) provided support for its ubiquity and insight into variation in the experience of perceived relevance among students of different groups. The findings combine to support a multidimensional perspective of relevance in the 9th grade biology classroom; offering researchers a useful model for future investigation and educators with insights into the students' classroom experience. / Educational Psychology

Previous literature has suggested an apparent P300 sensitivity to self-relevant stimuli. To further explore this relationship, we asked participants to submit 10 photos, each of a particular category (e.g. footwear, plants), to be used as either targets or distractors in a given condition of an oddball task. Furthermore, we attempted to see whether the effect of self-relevance on the P300 could be induced in a participant by allowing them to study a set of unique photos which would then be used as targets. Our analysis suggested that P300 amplitude elicited in response to self-relevant stimuli used as targets was statistically significantly greater than all other conditions’ targets. This effect was not correlated with the participant sentiment toward their own photos as assessed by the Revised Personal Involvement Inventory. In light of this, we suggest a generalized effect of self-relevance on the P300. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Instagramkonton där föräldrar exponerar sina barn blir allt vanligare och allt mer populära. Detta kräver att barnen framställs på ett vis som är tilltalande för mottagarna. Denna uppsats ämnar att påvisa detta fenomen genom att granska hur två av de mer uppmärksammade svenska Instagrampersonligheterna i form av Penny Schulman respektive Naomi Ljungqvist framställs på Instagram. Målet är att genomföra studien med hjälp av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys som är grundad i semiotiska teorier. Genom dessa teorier vill vi utläsa hur framställningen av dessa barn ser ut samt hur de förhåller sig till de enligt Barthes (1973) rådande mytbildningar som existerar kring barn och familjeliv. För att kunna genomföra analysen kommer vi utgå från Hallidays teorier kring agent och aktion, konnotationer och denotationer samt mytbildningar. Resultatet vi fann var att de bägge barnen innehar liknande karaktärsdrag men med olika förhållningar till de kulturellt rådande myterna kring barn och familjeliv. Penny Schulman upplever vi som mer avvikande från den traditionella myten om barn då hon har ett självständigt agerande och inte är en passiv agent. Naomi Ljungqvist samspelar desto oftare med sin mor Johanna och stämmer därmed bättre in på den traditionella uppfattningen om barn som en del av en familj och inte en självständig individ. Utifrån vår analys kan vi se tydliga skillnader i hur analysobjekten bryter sig ifrån den klassiska bilden om barn som en passiv agent. I det analyserade materialet ser vi istället en nybildad familjemyt där barnet och dess utveckling samt anpassning till vuxenlivet presenteras. / Instagram accounts where parents are exposing their children are in today’s society a common sight as well as a popular phenomenon. This requires a depiction where the children are appealing in the eyes of the recipients. Our thesis will examining the phenomenon through an analysis of two well known swedish Instagram personalities being Penny Schulman and Naomi Ljungqvist and how they are depicted on Instagram. The goal is to implement the study with the help of a qualitative content analysis which has its base in semiotic theories. Through these theories we want to study the depiction of these children and how they relate to the - according to Barthes (1973), existing mythologies regarding children and family life. To be able to perform this study we will originate from Hallidays theories regarding agency in action, connotations and denotations and finally mythologies. The conclusion we reached was that both of the children have similar traits of character but with different suspension to the prevailing myths of children and family life. We find Penny Schulman to be more divergent from the traditional myth of children since she is acting more independent and not as a passive agent. Naomi Ljungqvist on the other hand is seemingly more dependent of her mother and therefore fit better into the traditional perception of children in a family context. Based on our analysis we can see clear differences in how the analyzed children are breaking from the traditional view of children as passive agents. In the analysed material we can see a new myth regarding family taking form where the children and their development is presented together with their adaption to adulthood.

Relevance is an essential concept in information retrieval (IR) and relevance estimation is a fundamental IR task. It involves not only document relevance estimation, but also estimation of user's information need. Relevance-based language model aims to estimate a relevance model (i.e., a relevant query term distribution) from relevance feedback documents. The true relevance model should be generated from truly relevant documents. The ideal estimation of the true relevance model is expected to be not only effective in terms of mean retrieval performance (e.g., Mean Average Precision) over all the queries, but also stable in the sense that the performance is stable across different individual queries. In practice, however, in approximating/estimating the true relevance model, the improvement of retrieval effectiveness often sacrifices the retrieval stability, and vice versa. In this thesis, we propose to explore and analyze such effectiveness-stability tradeoff from a new perspective, i.e., the bias-variance tradeoff that is a fundamental theory in statistical estimation. We first formulate the bias, variance and the trade-off between them for retrieval performance as well as for query model estimation. We then analytically and empirically study a number of factors (e.g., query model complexity, query model combination, document weight smoothness and irrelevant documents removal) that can affect the bias and variance. Our study shows that the proposed bias-variance trade-off analysis can serve as an analytical framework for query model estimation. We then investigate in depth on two particular key factors: document weight smoothness and removal of irrelevant documents, in query model estimation, by proposing novel methods for document weight smoothing and irrelevance distribution separation, respectively. Systematic experimental evaluation on TREC collections shows that the proposed methods can improve both retrieval effectiveness and retrieval stability of query model estimation. In addition to the above main contributions, we also carry out initial exploration on two further directions: the formulation of bias-variance in personalization and looking at the query model estimation via a novel theoretical angle (i.e., Quantum theory) that has partially inspired our research.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo verificar a relevância da informação contábil, por meio dos principais fatores que afetam o potencial de crescimento das empresas brasileiras não financeiras de capital aberto no período de 2002 a 2012. A proposta é analisar o impacto da variável potencial de crescimento sob a ótica dos investidores, bem como a adoção das normas internacionais de contabilidade no que tange à qualidade das informações produzidas pela contabilidade. Esta análise permite aos investidores otimizar os investimentos em empresas com melhores perspectivas no futuro. Além do benefício aos investidores, conhecer os principais fatores de crescimento contribui para que as empresas direcionem ações de forma a melhorar sua expectativa de crescimento, resultando em maior interesse por parte dos investidores. Para atingir os objetivos propostos, as informações captadas nos demonstrativos contábeis foram confrontadas com as produzidas pelo mercado, bem como comparou-se as informações produzidas antes e após a introdução das normas internacionais de contabilidade. O modelo adotado foi a regressão em painel por permitir verificar com maior eficiência o comportamento das variáveis ao longo do tempo. Os resultados sinalizam que o potencial de crescimento das empresas é melhor mensurado a partir das informações de mercado do que quando medido pelas informações contábeis e que o potencial de crescimento diminui com a adoção das normas internacionais de contabilidade. Também foram identificadas que na visão contábil, endividamento e retorno sobre ativo são as variáveis mestras no impacto do potencial de crescimento, ao passo que na visão de mercado as variáveis influenciadoras são: tamanho, endividamento e retorno sobre o ativo. / The aim of this essay is to verify the relevance of accounting information through the main factors which affect the growth potential of publicly traded non-financial Brazilian companies from 2002 to 2012. The proposal is to analyze the impact of the variable described as growth potential under the investor\'s point of view, as well as check out the impact of adopting international accounting norms in the quality of information produced by accountancy. This analysis allows investors to optimize their investments in companies with a better perspective in the future. Furthermore, knowing the key growth factors, allow companies benefit as they direct their actions to improve their growth expectation, resulting in more interested investors. In order to achieve the goals, the information gathered at the accounting statements were compared to the information produced by the market, and the accounting information produced before and after the introduction of the international accounting norms were compared. The regression in paper model was adopted, in order to allow a more efficient behavior check out of the variables throughout the time. The results show that the companies\' growth potential is better measured from market information than when it is measured through accounting information. And that the growth potential decreased with the introduction of international accounting norms. It was also detected that in accounting view the variables that impact the growth potential are debts and return over investment, and in market view the variables are size, debts and return over assets.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo verificar a relevância da informação contábil, por meio dos principais fatores que afetam o potencial de crescimento das empresas brasileiras não financeiras de capital aberto no período de 2002 a 2012. A proposta é analisar o impacto da variável potencial de crescimento sob a ótica dos investidores, bem como a adoção das normas internacionais de contabilidade no que tange à qualidade das informações produzidas pela contabilidade. Esta análise permite aos investidores otimizar os investimentos em empresas com melhores perspectivas no futuro. Além do benefício aos investidores, conhecer os principais fatores de crescimento contribui para que as empresas direcionem ações de forma a melhorar sua expectativa de crescimento, resultando em maior interesse por parte dos investidores. Para atingir os objetivos propostos, as informações captadas nos demonstrativos contábeis foram confrontadas com as produzidas pelo mercado, bem como comparou-se as informações produzidas antes e após a introdução das normas internacionais de contabilidade. O modelo adotado foi a regressão em painel por permitir verificar com maior eficiência o comportamento das variáveis ao longo do tempo. Os resultados sinalizam que o potencial de crescimento das empresas é melhor mensurado a partir das informações de mercado do que quando medido pelas informações contábeis e que o potencial de crescimento diminui com a adoção das normas internacionais de contabilidade. Também foram identificadas que na visão contábil, endividamento e retorno sobre ativo são as variáveis mestras no impacto do potencial de crescimento, ao passo que na visão de mercado as variáveis influenciadoras são: tamanho, endividamento e retorno sobre o ativo. / The aim of this essay is to verify the relevance of accounting information through the main factors which affect the growth potential of publicly traded non-financial Brazilian companies from 2002 to 2012. The proposal is to analyze the impact of the variable described as growth potential under the investor\'s point of view, as well as check out the impact of adopting international accounting norms in the quality of information produced by accountancy. This analysis allows investors to optimize their investments in companies with a better perspective in the future. Furthermore, knowing the key growth factors, allow companies benefit as they direct their actions to improve their growth expectation, resulting in more interested investors. In order to achieve the goals, the information gathered at the accounting statements were compared to the information produced by the market, and the accounting information produced before and after the introduction of the international accounting norms were compared. The regression in paper model was adopted, in order to allow a more efficient behavior check out of the variables throughout the time. The results show that the companies\' growth potential is better measured from market information than when it is measured through accounting information. And that the growth potential decreased with the introduction of international accounting norms. It was also detected that in accounting view the variables that impact the growth potential are debts and return over investment, and in market view the variables are size, debts and return over assets.