The purpose of this study was to discover if as an expert witness, an SLP can make a significant impact on the decision made by juries in the cases of defendants with a traumatic brain injury compared to no expert witness testimony. Participants were recruited from a pool of individuals who met the requirements to be a potential juror in the state of Illinois. Participants completed a survey regarding their opinions on defendants with TBI in court cases. The survey was created with the online survey generator software, “Google Forms” in order to determine if individuals would judge a defendant differently when informed of the expert witness testimony of an SLP. Results suggest a positive correlation between exposure to SLP testimony and greater leniency or rehabilitative tendencies in legal judgment. The implications of these results shine a very important light on the issue of individuals with TBI inside the criminal justice system. If cases continue to be held in a court of law without the input of specialized SLP expert knowledge, it would be difficult to say if true justice is served for each individual. With SLP expert testimony, the number of individuals with TBI who are behind bars as a result of ill-informed jury sentencing could be significantly reduced.

Subjective information is a valuable resource; however, decisionmakers often ignore it because of difficulties in eliciting it from assessors. This thesis is on Bayesian inquiry and it presents an approach to eliciting subjective information from assessors. Based on the concepts of cascaded inference and Bayesian statistics, the approach is designed to reveal to the decision-maker the way in which the assessor considers his options and the reasons he has for selecting particular alternatives. Unlike previous works on cascaded inferences, the approach here focuses on incoherency. Specifically, it employs the use of additional information to revise and check the estimates. The reassessment may be done directly or indirectly. The indirect procedure uses a second order probability or type II distribution. An algorithm utilizing this approach is also presented. The methodology is applicable to any number of assessors. Procedures for aggregating and deriving surrogate distributions are also proposed.

A project report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering. / This dissertation has as it's objective to develop an expert system for the purpose of investigating the suitability of using expert systems in developing areas. It is the first time to our knowledge that an expert system has been tested for usage in such a context. The housing and more specifically roofing domain is investigated for an application topic resulting in "the selection of suitable roofing types" being chosen. Potential end-users are identified, an appropriate context of such a system is outlined and an expert system tool is selected, The knowledge engineering and building of the knowledge base are described. Feedback from the parties involved in testing and validating BUILDROOF is documented. In addition the suitability of using expert systems in the developing areas context in which BUILDROOF was developed, is discussed. Finally, recommendations regarding potentially suitable areas of application for expert systems in developing areas are outlined. / Andrew Chakane 2019

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Health care guidelines provide a means of assessing the best available research evidence on a given health care topic and offering recommendations about use of specific interventions and management of patient care. Guidelines allow clinicians, patients, health administrators and policy-makers to be efficiently informed and stay up to date on alternative care options. The development of guidelines is a complex and multidisciplinary process, with a defining feature of involving a panel of experts in steps such as selecting health care questions, assessing the research evidence, making judgements about health benefits and harms, and, ultimately, formulating recommendations. Guideline methodology has advanced over the past decades, including establishment of specific steps and standards to ensure trustworthiness of guidelines. However, there remain critical research questions on how to best accomplish and reach these standards, including how to best engage panels in the steps. This thesis presents a body of research on the development and evaluation of new methods for decision-making and considering health outcomes in guidelines, prioritizing health care questions for guidelines, and evaluating the guideline development process. It includes three studies: 1) a methodological study on developing health outcome descriptors to define health outcomes considered in decision-making by guideline panels; 2) a methodological study and randomized controlled trial to evaluate specific criteria for panels to consider when prioritizing health care questions for guidelines and to judge the importance of health outcomes; and 3) an instrument development and validation study to create a tool for panel members to evaluate the appropriateness of the guideline development process they participate in. In these studies, we established a method and steps for creating health outcome descriptors with panels, aimed at achieving consistency in how health outcomes are considered throughout the guideline development process, from prioritization to formulating a recommendation on the basis of those outcomes. The structured approach and criteria evaluated for prioritization of healthcare questions informed panel deliberations and decisions about choosing questions for their guideline topics, and the proposed methods for outcome prioritization facilitated panels in informing what the critical and important outcomes were for decision-making. Finally, the instrument we developed facilitated members of guideline panels to provide their assessment of the guideline development process and identify strengths and weaknesses and areas for improvement. Our findings will allow organizations responsible for guideline development to apply the new methods with their panels and to evaluate their guideline processes to inform quality-improvement efforts. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Health care guidelines, also referred to as clinical practice or public health guidelines, involve summarizing the available research evidence on a given health care topic and issuing recommendations about the best care. Guidelines allow clinicians, patients, health administrators and policy-makers to be efficiently informed and stay up to date on alternative care options, such as the best current treatments and strategies to diagnose various diseases and health conditions. Developing a guideline is a complex and multidisciplinary process that includes involving a panel of experts, typically consisting of clinicians, patients, public health professionals and other providers or consumers of health care. The panel is involved in selecting the health care questions to address (e.g. specific treatments or diagnostic strategies to evaluate), reviewing a summary of the evidence from research studies, and making judgements about benefits and harms of alternate options or strategies. The panel then formulates recommendations that give guidance on what the best options are to use for the health condition in question. The steps and approaches to develop a guideline that is considered trustworthy have been established over the past decades, including universally accepted standards. However, there remain critical research questions on how to best reach these standards, including how to best engage guideline panels in the steps. The research work presented in this thesis focuses on proposing and evaluating new methods and approaches for guidelines panels to make decisions about health outcomes, priority health care questions for guidelines, and to evaluate the guideline development process. It includes three studies: 1) a study on creating health outcome descriptors with panels to provide a commonly accepted definition of a health outcome; 2) a study to evaluate specific criteria that panels can use to prioritize health care questions, and an approach to judge the importance of health outcomes; and 3) a study to develop a survey instrument for guideline panel members to evaluate the guideline development process they participate in. In these studies, we established an approach for creating the health outcome descriptors with panels, which helped in keeping consistency with how panels understood and considered different health outcomes throughout the guideline development process. The criteria evaluated for prioritizing healthcare questions informed panel discussions and selection of questions for their guideline topics. The proposed approach for judging the importance of health outcomes helped panels to select what the critical outcomes were for making decisions about the benefits and harms of alternate options or strategies. Finally, the survey tool we created allowed members of guideline panels to provide feedback on strengths and weaknesses and areas for improvement in the process after they participated in developing a guideline. Our findings will allow organizations responsible for guideline development to apply the new methods with their panels and to evaluate their guideline processes to inform quality-improvement efforts.

<p>A runway incursion occurs when an aircraft, ground vehicle, or a pedestrian is present on a runway when they were not supposed to be there. Runway incursions are a decades-old and continuing problem. The runway incursion between two Boeing 747s at Tenerife airport in 1977 is still the worst accident in aviation history. Despite the aviation community’s efforts to mitigate runway incursions, the number of incursions has not decreased. Though most of the runway incursions that occur today are near-misses or incidents, and do not result in injuries or aircraft damage, we cannot count on fortune to prevent another deadly accident.</p><p>While the COVID-19 crisis has slowed air traffic, the industry is optimistic about recovery and return to the growth in air traffic we have seen over the past decade. With this growth comes the potential for more runway incursions. Therefore, we must develop better ways of preventing incursions. Runway incursion incidents are one way to learn more about how we can prevent similar incidents in the future and reduce the probability of serious accidents. Unfortunately, most incident reports lack detailed information on the causes of runway incursions. In the United States, trained investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board investigate aviation accidents, but not most incidents, including incursions. Air traffic controllers on duty at the time of incursion report the incident to the FAA. While most controller reports explain what happened, they often do not explain why the incident happened. We need deeper insight into why incidents occur so that we can develop more effective measures to reduce incursions.</p><p>After controllers submit their incident reports, reviewers at the FAA go through the controller-generated reports and determine the need for further investigation. They may contact the controllers for more information or talk to the pilots involved. This research considers one aspect of the reporting process — the reporting form. The research hypothesis is that an alternative reporting form that asks detailed questions and guides the controller to look deeper into an incident can provide more details on human error and causes of these errors than the current form, which does not necessarily prompt controllers to gather all the details of the incident.</p><p>The design of the alternative reporting form is based on the theoretical framework of expert systems. Expert systems, which provide tailored questions and guidance to medical doctors and others, have proven useful in other fields. The resulting alternative tool aims to guide controllers into answering three major questions: what happened (which aircraft were where, and when), how it happened (e.g., controller gave the wrong instruction), and why it happened (e.g., controller was fatigued).</p><p>To investigate how controllers interact with different reporting formats and what helps them or detracts them from creating useful reports, the research experiment involved controllers reporting two hypothetical runway incursions either using the alternative reporting tool or an online survey based on the current FAA form. The experiment used surveys, think-aloud protocols, observations, and interviews to collect data on what controllers included in their reports and how controllers generated these reports. The findings helped compare the type of information we get from the two reporting formats, and how the reporting formats affected the quality of the incident reports.</p><p>Overall, the alternative tool-generated reports provided more information than the online survey based on the current FAA form. Each controller who participated in the experiment approached preparing an incident report differently and different factors motivated them to specify details of the incident. While the format of the alternative reporting form helped one controller talk to the pilot and learn more about why the pilot made an error, the format did not have the same impact on another controller.</p><p>This research identifies ways of helping controllers prepare more useful reports. This research may help the FAA improve data collection. More useful reports in the future can help the aviation community identify the cause of human errors leading to incursions, and develop more effective mitigation strategies, ultimately saving lives.</p><p><br></p>

This report details the development of a training program intended to teach instructional designers (IDs) and subject matter experts (SMEs) how to develop online courses. The training was developed for Utah Valley University's Aviation Science department in order to help meet a course production deadline. The development process follows the Diamond model and a variation on that model was used in producing the training course. Once the training had been developed and implemented, qualitative data was gathered from both IDs and SMEs to help evaluate the training. Additionally the development time and cost for each course was analyzed. The training was shown to have improved production time and in turn, reduce the cost of each course. However, the feedback from the SMEs and IDs indicated that while the training was informative, the use of animated video and narration was less helpful. The biggest improvement was seen to have come from the IDs own improved understanding and confidence in developing their courses.

This thesis develops an interactive computer-aided graphics package for the display of experimental and field test data. EXPERT was developed to be used in conjunction with MOVIE.BYU and DISSPLA, utilizing a bivariate interpolation scheme to create a full field of data using the "sparse" field data as pivotal points. The usefulness and practicality of the program is demonstrated by graphically displaying the data from the Air Force Weapons Laboratory's CHEAT test.