Search results for " Collection"

Mothers’ non-standard working and childcare-related challenges : A comparison between lone and coupled mothers

2016

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to particularly focus on lone-mother families, comparing the childcare-related challenges experienced by working lone mothers and coupled mothers in three European countries in the context of a 24/7 economy and non-standard working hours (e.g. evening, night and weekend work). Design/methodology/approach – This study utilises survey data from Finnish, Dutch and British working mothers (n=1,106) collected as part of the “Families 24/7” research project. Multivariate regression analysis is used to analyse the associations between childcare-related challenges, maternal non-standard working, lone motherhood and country of residence. Findings – The results…

Variation in situation-specific engagement among lower secondary school students

2018

The majority of previous research has examined school engagement as an overall student characteristic. The present study contributes to the field by examining variation in students' situation-specific engagement from one lesson to another and by investigating situational determinants of such variation. An intensive one-week lesson-to-lesson data collection was conducted in four lower secondary school classrooms. Students rated their situation-specific engagement at the end of each lesson with a mobile-based InSitu instrument. Data comprising a total of 57 students and 1328 ratings were analyzed with two-level hierarchical multivariate model (between students, and within students between les…

Basic Statistical Techniques

2012

A probabilistic estimation and prediction technique for dynamic continuous social science models: The evolution of the attitude of the Basque Country…

2015

In this paper, a computational technique to deal with uncertainty in dynamic continuous models in Social Sciences is presented.Considering data from surveys,the method consists of determining the probability distribution of the survey output and this allows to sample data and fit the model to the sampled data using a goodness-of-fit criterion based the χ2-test. Taking the fitted parameters that were not rejected by the χ2-test, substituting them into the model and computing their outputs, 95% confidence intervals in each time instant capturing the uncertainty of the survey data (probabilistic estimation) is built. Using the same set of obtained model parameters, a prediction over …

Helminth Microbiota Profiling Using Bacterial 16S rRNA Gene Amplicon Sequencing: From Sampling to Sequence Data Mining

2021

Symbiont microbial communities play important roles in animal biology and are thus considered integral components of metazoan organisms, including parasitic worms (helminths). Nevertheless, the study of helminth microbiomes has thus far been largely overlooked, and symbiotic relationships between helminths and their microbiomes have been only investigated in selected parasitic worms. Over the past decade, advances in next-generation sequencing technologies, coupled with their increased affordability, have spurred investigations of helminth-associated microbial communities aiming at enhancing current understanding of their fundamental biology and physiology, as well as of host-microbe intera…

FIRST

2018

Thanks to the collective action of participating smartphone users, mobile crowdsensing allows data collection at a scale and pace that was once impossible. The biggest challenge to overcome in mobile crowdsensing is that participants may exhibit malicious or unreliable behavior, thus compromising the accuracy of the data collection process. Therefore, it becomes imperative to design algorithms to accurately classify between reliable and unreliable sensing reports. To address this crucial issue, we propose a novel Framework for optimizing Information Reliability in Smartphone-based participaTory sensing (FIRST) that leverages mobile trusted participants (MTPs) to securely assess the reliabil…

Do-search -- a tool for causal inference and study design with multiple data sources

2020

Epidemiologic evidence is based on multiple data sources including clinical trials, cohort studies, surveys, registries, and expert opinions. Merging information from different sources opens up new possibilities for the estimation of causal effects. We show how causal effects can be identified and estimated by combining experiments and observations in real and realistic scenarios. As a new tool, we present do-search, a recently developed algorithmic approach that can determine the identifiability of a causal effect. The approach is based on do-calculus, and it can utilize data with nontrivial missing data and selection bias mechanisms. When the effect is identifiable, do-search outputs an i…

Chances and Challenges of Computational Data Gathering and Analysis

2015

Digital and social media and large available data-sets generate various new possibilities and challenges for conducting research focused on perpetually developing online news ecosystems. This paper presents a novel computational technique for gathering and processing large quantities of data from Facebook. We demonstrate how to use this technique for detecting and analysing issue-attention cycles and news flows in Facebook groups and pages. Although the paper concentrates on a Finnish Facebook group as a case study, the demonstrated method can be used for gathering and analysing large sets of data from various social network sites and national contexts. The paper also discusses Facebook pla…

A Mobile-Assisted Working Model for Supporting Daily Family Life

2015

Despite rapid technological development, very few new technology-assisted tools have been developed specifically for use in family services. This article describes a new, mobile-assisted working model designed to enhance the quality of daily family life. The model has its origins in the existing research on daily family life and on the diary method, which has been widely used in data collection in family research. The model provides support for the daily life of client families in the intervals between meetings with family counselors via the use of text messages. The pilot study explored family members’ and family counselors’ experiences of using the model. Data on 26 parents and four chil…

Risk Taking by Banks in the Transition Countries

2007

The banking sectors of the transition countries have progressed remarkably in the last 15 years. In fact, banking in most transition countries has largely shaken off the traumas of the transition era. At the start of the 21st century banks in these countries look very much like banks elsewhere. That is, they are by no means problem free but they are struggling with the same issues as banks in other emerging market countries. There have been a surprisingly large number of studies that have told us about the performance of these banks but we know very little about their risk taking behaviour and how the banking environment influences it.