414 research outputs found
A Longitudinal Cohort Study on the Retainment of Test-Driven Development
Background: Test-Driven Development (TDD) is an agile software development
practice, which is claimed to boost both external quality of software products
and developers' productivity. Aims: We want to study (i) the TDD effects on the
external quality of software products as well as the developers' productivity,
and (ii) the retainment of TDD over a period of five months. Method: We
conducted a (quantitative) longitudinal cohort study with 30 third year
undergraduate students in Computer Science at the University of Bari in Italy.
Results: The use of TDD has a statistically significant effect neither on the
external quality of software products nor on the developers' productivity.
However, we observed that participants using TDD produced significantly more
tests than those applying a non-TDD development process and that the retainment
of TDD is particularly noticeable in the amount of tests written. Conclusions:
Our results should encourage software companies to adopt TDD because who
practices TDD tends to write more tests---having more tests can come in handy
when testing software systems or localizing faults---and it seems that novice
developers retain TDD.Comment: ESEM, October 2018, Oulu, Finlan
On Teachers Quality Decline
Evidence suggests the average ability of teachers to have progressively declined in developed countries over the last decades. Many explanations have been proposed, all suggesting the idea of a lower attractiveness of teaching professions (both in monetary and non monetary terms) with respect to feasible alternative working opportunities. This should apply to women at least, because of the great expansion of job opportunities which interested female cohorts in the second half of the century. However, the long lasting problem of getting credible ability measures has often driven partial results. Here two UK population samples of individuals born in different years are considered. Individuals were exposed to ability tests at early stages of their life, so that subsequent education paths are exogenous to test scores. Transformation in percentiles allows to get comparable measures of ability, and distributions for those who undertook the teaching career are obtained in the two samples. Consistently with previous literature, using difference-in-difference, we find evidence of teachers quality decline. A gender based analysis is performed in order to address gender differences and specific questions. Data on salaries, ditributions across jobs and social mobility are finally used in order to find possible explanations. Further questions arise.teachers quality; ability measure; NCDS; BCS; difference in difference; social mobility
Should home-based HIV testing and counseling services be offered periodically in programs of ARV treatment as prevention? A case study in Likoma (Malawi).
To reduce HIV incidence, prevention programs centered on the use of antiretrovirals require scaling-up HIV testing and counseling (HTC). Home-based HTC services (HBHTC) increase HTC coverage, but HBHTC has only been evaluated during one-off campaigns. Two years after an initial HBHTC campaign ("round 1"), we conducted another HBHTC campaign ("round 2") in Likoma (Malawi). HBHTC participation increased during round 2 among women (from 74 to 83%, P < 0.01). New HBHTC clients were recruited, especially at ages 25 and older. Only 6.9% of women but 15.9% of men remained unreached by HBHTC after round 2. HIV prevalence during round 2 was low among clients who were HIV-negative during round 1 (0.7%), but high among women who received their first ever HIV test during round 2 (42.8%). The costs per newly diagnosed infection increased significantly during round 2. Periodically conducting HBHTC campaigns can further increase HTC, but supplementary interventions to enroll individuals not reached by HBHTC are needed
Why Research on Test-Driven Development is Inconclusive?
[Background] Recent investigations into the effects of Test-Driven
Development (TDD) have been contradictory and inconclusive. This hinders
development teams to use research results as the basis for deciding whether and
how to apply TDD. [Aim] To support researchers when designing a new study and
to increase the applicability of TDD research in the decision-making process in
the industrial context, we aim at identifying the reasons behind the
inconclusive research results in TDD. [Method] We studied the state of the art
in TDD research published in top venues in the past decade, and analyzed the
way these studies were set up. [Results] We identified five categories of
factors that directly impact the outcome of studies on TDD. [Conclusions] This
work can help researchers to conduct more reliable studies, and inform
practitioners of risks they need to consider when consulting research on TDD.Comment: ESEM '20: ACM / IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software
Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), October 8--9, 2020, Bari, Ital
The role of loneliness in the association between chronic physical illness and depressive symptoms among older adults: A prospective cohort study
BACKGROUND: Chronic physical illness increases the risk of subsequent depressive symptoms, but we know little about the mechanisms underlying this association that interventions can target. We investigated whether loneliness might explain associations between chronic illness and subsequent depressive symptoms. METHODS: We used English Longitudinal Study of Ageing data, a prospective cohort of adults over 50. Our exposure was chronic illnesses (wave two) including arthritis, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Loneliness scores were a mediator on the short University of California, Los Angeles Loneliness Scale at wave three. Depressive symptom scores (outcome) were measured using the Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (wave four). We examined associations of chronic physical illness with loneliness and depressive symptoms in univariable and multivariable regression models. RESULTS: Fully-adjusted models included 2436 participants with the depression outcome and 2052 participants with the loneliness outcome. Chronic physical illness was associated with 21âŻ% (incident rate ratioâŻ=âŻ1.21, 95%CIâŻ=âŻ1.03â1.42) higher depression scores at follow-up. We found no evidence of an association between chronic physical illness and loneliness and therefore did not proceed to analyses of mediation. LIMITATIONS: More prevalent chronic illnesses could have driven our results, such as cardiovascular disease. CONCLUSIONS: Chronic physical illnesses increase the risk of depressive symptoms in older adults. However, we did not find any that chronic physical illnesses were associated with an increased risk of subsequent loneliness. Therefore, interventions targeting loneliness to reduce depression in older adults with chronic physical illness may be insufficient
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