Search results for "construct"
showing 10 items of 3723 documents
Vernacular budgeting and accounting routines – a longitudinal constructive case study
2022
PurposeThis case study aims to report a longitudinal analysis of the development and use of local “vernacular” accounting practice and a digital rolling-forecast system known as TeamBudget in a public sector organization.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs the constructive research approach which utilizes participative observation in the development of TeamBudget over the 15 years since 2004. The empirical data utilized includes eight interviews and documentary data for the system created.FindingsThe study demonstrates how the actions of employees responsible for developing a locally relevant financial planning system, TeamBudget, facilitated the emergence of new accounting routine…
“How Real People Really Need Mathematics in the Real World”—Authenticity in Mathematics Education
2018
This paper discusses authenticity from the perspective of mathematics education. Often, school mathematics offers students inauthentic word problems, which don’t show the authentic usefulness of mathematics in real life. In some tasks, authentic aspects are combined with inauthentic ones (e.g., an authentic context, but the question is artificial and different from what people within that context would ask). Several studies show that students are more motivated by authentic questions than by authentic contexts. Embedding these findings, I discuss issues associated with defining authenticity in education. A first issue is that philosophers use the term to characterize a person’s existential …
Tipologia, materiali e costruzione: i prospetti colonnati pubblici in Sicilia dall’età post-unitaria al ventennio fascista, tra reminiscenze archeolo…
2020
The paper analyses the debate in Sicily on the construction of the monumental colonnaded porticoes that characterise the facades of public edifices built on the island from the post- Unification period to the Fascist regime. The pronao of the Massimo Theatre in Palermo (from 1875) marks the climax of a cultural movement, which, for almost a century, was to associate the neo-Greek style with public buildings and the material of choice of Sicily’s church building tradition in a deterministic manner. Calcarenite was used to build the peristyles of the temples of the archaic and classical age, with imposing, tapered and grooved columns consisting of overlapping sections. In the Fascist period, …
Changing driver behavior during floods: Testing a novel e-health intervention using implementation imagery
2021
Abstract We tested the efficacy of a novel implementation imagery intervention (N = 460) in promoting safer intentions regarding driving into floodwater post-intervention, and at a four-week follow-up using a pre-registered randomized controlled design. Results showed that the intervention reduced intentions and subjective norms regarding driving into floodwater. The control condition also improved on intentions and subjective norms, but the changes appeared to only be maintained at the follow-up for the intervention group and the between group difference at the follow-up was not significant based on our pre-specified cutoff level for statistical significance of 0.01. Results also indicated…
Assessment of the reliability, validity, and responsiveness of a Spanish Asthma Quality of Life questionnaire.
1998
A Spanish-language questionnaire designed for measuring the impact of asthma on quality of life in adults was developed. It was derived, by the application of a rigorous translation protocol, from a previously validated, English-language Asthma Quality of Life (AQL) questionnaire which had been developed in Australia. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Spanish AQL questionnaire using a cross-sectional and longitudinal design. Two hundred ninety-four clinically stable subjects with asthma (168 women, mean baseline forced expiratory volume in 1 sec [FEV1] = 85% predicted), aged 17-70, attended for the initial baseline assessment. All subjects completed th…
Subjective symptomatology of asthma: validation of the asthma symptom checklist in an outpatient Spanish population.
1997
The objective of this study was to validate the Asthma Symptom Checklist (ASC) so that it could be reliably used to assess the subjective symptomatology of asthma attacks in our context. Subjective symptomatology of asthma was examined in a group of 100 adult Spanish outpatients (57 women, 43 men; 17-69 years of age) with asthma. All of them completed the modified version of the ASC as well as questionnaires of depression, anxiety, and self-management of asthma (self-efficacy expectancies and health care utilization). Data about duration and severity of asthma, as well as dyspnea and %FEV1, were also recorded. The highest reliability Cronbach alpha indexes were for the panic-fear and fatigu…
Single-staged laryngotracheal reconstruction for idiopathic tracheal stenosis.
2013
Background This study retrospectively evaluated the results of surgically treated idiopathic tracheal stenosis. Methods Of the 220 patients surgically treated for idiopathic subglottic and tracheal stenosis in the participating hospitals, we reviewed the surgical records of all patients with idiopathic tracheal stenosis. This subgroup required resection of all of the involved mucosa but frequently had undergone more conservative treatments that damaged the tracheal mucosa and cartilage and complicated the definitive surgical treatment. Results During the study period, 60 women (93.8%) and 4 men (6.2%), who were a mean age of 50 years (range, 19 to 77 years), were surgically treated for idio…
A new questionnaire specifically designed for patients affected by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
2006
Summary The aim of this study was to develop a specific and valid questionnaire for Italian COPD patients, living on the north or the south of Italy—which are two culturally distinct areas. The project consisted in three steps: (1) initial item set generation to identify items relevant to both genders, all ages and both regions; (2) item reduction including tests of regional specificity; (3) tests of internal validity using item-response theory using Rasch one-parameter modelling. Ninty-six COPD patients (mean aged 69 yr; 78 Male) completed the original set of 124 items of the Italian Health Status Questionnaire (IHSQ). Item reduction was carried out using an established standardised approa…
Calidad de vida en el asma: validación del cuestionario AQLQ para su utilización en población española
1995
The study of morbidity in asthma requires consideration not only of standard physiopathologic and function parameters, but also of the impact the disease has on the patient's life-style as he or she perceives it and evaluates it. The quantification of this factor, known as health-related quality of life (HRQL), is achieved by administering questionnaires specially designed for the purpose. We analyzed the reliability, content validity and construct validity (convergence and divergence) of one instrument, the Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AQLQ) designed by Marks and colleagues. This questionnaire covers 4 dimensions (breathlessness, mood, social limitation and worrying) and gives a t…
Method for size optimisation of large wind–hydrogen systems with high penetration on power grids
2013
Wind power generation is growing rapidly in many locations around the world. Power systems are able to absorb large amounts of wind capacity, but operational problems arise when the wind power penetration becomes high. Such factors as voltage dips, frequency variations, low power system stability, low reactive power and power flow imbalances reduce the economic value and represent a barrier to the unlimited development of wind energy. Hydrogen production from wind power that is not matched with hourly electricity demand appears to be an attractive storage option capable of providing a balancing service to the electricity generators and suppliers for mitigation of the negative impacts due to…