Search results for "CONSISTENCY"

Investigating the quality of mental models deployed by undergraduate engineering students in creating explanations: The case of thermally activated p…

2013

This paper describes a method aimed at pointing out the quality of the mental models undergraduate engineering students deploy when asked to create explanations for phenomena or processes and/or use a given model in the same context. Student responses to a specially designed written questionnaire are quantitatively analyzed using researcher-generated categories of reasoning, based on the physics education research literature on student understanding of the relevant physics content. The use of statistical implicative analysis tools allows us to successfully identify clusters of students with respect to the similarity to the reasoning categories, defined as ``practical or everyday,'' ``descri…

Are decisions in a real choice experiment consistent with reservation prices elicited with BDM 'auction'? The case of French baguettes

2014

Abstract The aim of this study was to compare consumer choices observed in a real choice experiment and their reservation prices elicited with the BDM mechanism in order to assess the rationality of participant behaviors. One hundred and seventy-seven participants tested four French baguettes in each task. For the real choice experiment, participants were faced with 17 scenarios (17 × 4 baguette-price combinations). In each method, participants could select a “no purchase” option. Comparing choices and reservation prices made it possible to assess the rationality of participant behaviors. From a strict economic standpoint, 50% of observed choices were fully rational. When one baguette was a…

Reducing CAS-SDCI space. Using selected spaces in configuration interaction calculations in an efficient way

2002

A new method is presented, which allows an important reduction of the size of some Configuration Interaction (CI) matrices. Starting from a Complete Active Space (CAS), the numerous configurations that have a small weight in the CAS wave function are eliminated. When excited configurations (e.g., singly and doubly excited) are added to the reference space, the resulting MR-SDCI space is reduced in the same proportion as compared with the full CAS–SDCI. A set of active orbitals is chosen, but some selection of the most relevant excitations is performed because not all the possible excitations act as SDCI generators. Thanks to a new addressing technique, the computational time is drastically …

The necessary distinction between methodology and philosophical assumptions in healthcare research

2012

Methodological discussions within healthcare research have traditionally described a methodological dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative methods. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that such a dichotomy presents unnecessary obstacles for good research design and is methodologically and philosophically unsustainable. The issue of incommensurability is not a question of method but rather a question of the philosophical premises underpinning a given method. Thus, transparency on the philosophical level is important for validity and consistency as well as for attempts to integrate or establish an interface to other research. I argue that it is necessary to make a distinction be…

Psychometric evidence of a brief measure of resilience in non-institutionalized Peruvian older adults

2018

Resilience is understood as the domain of personal resources and contextual factors that allow for a successful coping and enhance positive adaptation to the different stressors during the lifespan, thereby being important for a healthy and successful aging. Nowadays, several brief instruments have been developed to measure resilience, such as the Brief Resilient Coping Scale (BRCS), an instrument that measures the ability of people to confront stress in an adaptive way. In this vein, the study provides evidence of the validity and reliability of the BRCS in non-institutionalized older adults in Peru. Two hundred thirty-six elderly people of both genders, 78.4% women and 21.6% men, with a m…

On the behavior of a three-dimensional fractional viscoelastic constitutive model

2016

In this paper a three-dimensional isotropic fractional viscoelastic model is examined. It is shown that if different time scales for the volumetric and deviatoric components are assumed, the Poisson ratio is time varying function; in particular viscoelastic Poisson ratio may be obtained both increasing and decreasing with time. Moreover, it is shown that, from a theoretical point of view, one-dimensional fractional constitutive laws for normal stress and strain components are not correct to fit uniaxial experimental test, unless the time scale of deviatoric and volumetric are equal. Finally, the model is proved to satisfy correspondence principles also for the viscoelastic Poisson’s ratio a…

Lost in space? The concepts of planetary phenomena held by trainee primary school teachers

1997

The teaching of science in primary education has, at least according to the behaviourist tradition, sought to eliminate pupils’ faulty conceptualisations of scientific phenomena. This paper suggests that such conceptualisations are an integral part of learning and should be encouraged. The paper begins by reporting on an experiment originally developed to elicit information on the various concepts of planetary phenomena held by prospective primary school teachers in Finland. Through examining their conceptions, however, students became aware of their own cognitive processes and the underlying logic and consistency of their thinking. The paper suggests that this awareness and the methodology…

Datorzinātne un informācijas tehnoloģijas: Datu bāzes un Informācijas sistēmas

2010

Similarity and Consistency in Hotel Online Ratings across Platforms

2019

Online ratings are a major driver of hotel choice. There are many ratings platforms, and the number of evaluations is huge. This article analyzes if hotel ratings vary across platforms, vary over time, and if consistency in ratings can be observed. Longitudinal online ratings taken from 11 platforms over a two-year period were analyzed through Self-Organizing Maps. The findings suggest a similar pattern of online ratings across most of the platforms, except for Yelp and HolidayCheck. In addition, the evaluation patterns are stable over time, and the analyzed attributes do not contribute decisively to explain the overall evaluation of hotels, which implies that tourists use a noncompensator…

Exploiting Numerical Behaviors in SPH.

2010

Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics is a meshless particle method able to evaluate unknown field functions and relative differential operators. This evaluation is done by performing an integral representation based on a suitable smoothing kernel function which, in the discrete formulation, involves a set of particles scattered in the problem domain. Two fundamental aspects strongly characterizing the development of the method are the smoothing kernel function and the particle distribution. Their choice could lead to the so-called particle inconsistency problem causing a loose of accuracy in the approximation; several corrective strategies can be adopted to overcome this problem. This paper focu…