136,301 research outputs found
Similarity Structure Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling in Studying Latent Structures: An Application to the Attitudes towards Portuguese Language Questionnaire
Several international studies such as PISA and PILRS (Progress in
International Reading Literacy Study), have stressed the importance of positive attitudes
and behaviours as facilitators of individuals reading literacy during the school years
and throughout their lives.
Considering that there are not available instruments for assessing attitudes Towards
Portuguese Language, it was proposed the development of the Attitudes towards
Portuguese Language Questionnaire – ATPLQ (Questionário de Atitudes Face Ă
LĂngua Portuguesa: QAFLP, Neto et al., 2011; Rebelo, 2012). The questionnaire has
22 Likert-type items, with four levels of response (Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree,
Strongly Agree), spread, through exploratory factor analysis (EFA), over three attitudinal
dimensions: Behavioural, Affective, and Motivational.In this study we aimed to analyse
the ATPLQ’s latent structure with a pooled sample data of 1441 participants, applying
similarity structure analysis (SSA) and confirmatory factor analysis of ordinal data
(CFA). The SSA was carried out with Hudap in order to identify the structural properties
of the questionnaire and to assess its adequacy in a Portuguese population. The CFA
was carried out with LISREL in order to assure structural validity, i.e., accounting
for factorial validity, but also for factors’ convergent and discriminant validity, and
composite reliability. These psychometric features allowed the comparison of both the
EFA derived model and the SSA derived model.
We justify the selection of the SSA’s model, and we discuss the similarities between the
results generated by SSA and LISREL procedures, highlighting their use in modeling
constructs with ordinal indicators
A Detail Based Method for Linear Full Reference Image Quality Prediction
In this paper, a novel Full Reference method is proposed for image quality
assessment, using the combination of two separate metrics to measure the
perceptually distinct impact of detail losses and of spurious details. To this
purpose, the gradient of the impaired image is locally decomposed as a
predicted version of the original gradient, plus a gradient residual. It is
assumed that the detail attenuation identifies the detail loss, whereas the
gradient residuals describe the spurious details. It turns out that the
perceptual impact of detail losses is roughly linear with the loss of the
positional Fisher information, while the perceptual impact of the spurious
details is roughly proportional to a logarithmic measure of the signal to
residual ratio. The affine combination of these two metrics forms a new index
strongly correlated with the empirical Differential Mean Opinion Score (DMOS)
for a significant class of image impairments, as verified for three independent
popular databases. The method allowed alignment and merging of DMOS data coming
from these different databases to a common DMOS scale by affine
transformations. Unexpectedly, the DMOS scale setting is possible by the
analysis of a single image affected by additive noise.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures. Copyright notice: The paper has been accepted
for publication on the IEEE Trans. on Image Processing on 19/09/2017 and the
copyright has been transferred to the IEE
Temporal similarity metrics for latent network reconstruction: The role of time-lag decay
When investigating the spreading of a piece of information or the diffusion
of an innovation, we often lack information on the underlying propagation
network. Reconstructing the hidden propagation paths based on the observed
diffusion process is a challenging problem which has recently attracted
attention from diverse research fields. To address this reconstruction problem,
based on static similarity metrics commonly used in the link prediction
literature, we introduce new node-node temporal similarity metrics. The new
metrics take as input the time-series of multiple independent spreading
processes, based on the hypothesis that two nodes are more likely to be
connected if they were often infected at similar points in time. This
hypothesis is implemented by introducing a time-lag function which penalizes
distant infection times. We find that the choice of this time-lag strongly
affects the metrics' reconstruction accuracy, depending on the network's
clustering coefficient and we provide an extensive comparative analysis of
static and temporal similarity metrics for network reconstruction. Our findings
shed new light on the notion of similarity between pairs of nodes in complex
networks
Upward Influence in Organizations: Test of A Model
A causal model of upward influence in organizations was proposed and tested on a sample of staff nurses and their supervisors in a hospital setting. LISREL results demonstrated that the proposed model fit the data well, and reflected a better fit than several alternative models that were estimated. The contributions and limitations of the present study are discussed, in addition to challenges and directions for future research
Determinant factors of structural similarity at the regional level: evidence from Portugal
There is scant evidence on the determinant factors of structural similarity between geographical spaces; moreover, it has been produced considering only the national level. The present study provides evidence on this topic at the regional level, based on the analysis of 275 Portuguese counties. The results obtained confirm the importance of several explanatory factors, suggesting that the structural similarity between Portuguese counties increases with geographical proximity, the existence of a shared boundary, the similarity of factor endowments in terms of physical and human capital and the similarity in terms of economic centrality and market dimension. Key words: productive structure, Portugal, structural similarity, factor endowments, economic geography
Evaluation of protein surface roughness index using its heat denatured aggregates
Recent research works on potential of different protein surface describing parameters to predict protein surface properties gained significance for its possible implication in extracting clues on protein's functional site. In this direction, Surface Roughness Index, a surface topological parameter, showed its potential to predict SCOP-family of protein. The present work stands on the foundation of these works where a semi-empirical method for evaluation of Surface Roughness Index directly from its heat denatured protein aggregates (HDPA) was designed and demonstrated successfully. The steps followed consist, the extraction of a feature, Intensity Level Multifractal Dimension (ILMFD) from the microscopic images of HDPA, followed by the mapping of ILMFD into Surface Roughness Index (SRI) through recurrent backpropagation network (RBPN). Finally SRI for a particular protein was predicted by clustering of decisions obtained through feeding of multiple data into RBPN, to obtain general tendency of decision, as well as to discard the noisy dataset. The cluster centre of the largest cluster was found to be the best match for mapping of Surface Roughness Index of each protein in our study. The semi-empirical approach adopted in this paper, shows a way to evaluate protein's surface property without depending on its already evaluated structure
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