Towards a Theory of Software Development Expertise

Software development includes diverse tasks such as implementing new features, analyzing requirements, and fixing bugs. Being an expert in those tasks requires a certain set of skills, knowledge, and experience. Several studies investigated individual aspects of software development expertise, but what is missing is a comprehensive theory. We present a first conceptual theory of software development expertise that is grounded in data from a mixed-methods survey with 335 software developers and in literature on expertise and expert performance. Our theory currently focuses on programming, but already provides valuable insights for researchers, developers, and employers. The theory describes important properties of software development expertise and which factors foster or hinder its formation, including how developers' performance may decline over time. Moreover, our quantitative results show that developers' expertise self-assessments are context-dependent and that experience is not necessarily related to expertise.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 26th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2018), ACM, 201

Adult Development of Positive Personality Traits Through Character Formation Mentoring

Positive psychologists have published hundreds of empirical studies correlating positive personality traits with improved outcomes in mental health, physical health, academic and career success, resilience, relationships, and personal happiness. But there remains a dearth of research on the emergence and development of positive personality traits. This grounded theory, qualitative research sought to discover whether positive personality traits can be developed in adult mentoring relationships. Sixteen participants responded in structured interviews about the benefits of their mentoring experiences, and in addition to performing coding analysis as described by Strauss and Corbin (1990), the researcher also compared the answers to Peterson and Seligman\u27s taxonomy of positive traits (2004). Unprompted participant responses overwhelmingly asserted increase of positive traits, as well as five other benefit categories. Improved traits appeared across a wide range of mentee characteristics, and situations, including negative ones, as long as mentors communicated unconditional positive regard and possessed desirable competencies. Social considerations of this research include the possibility that, in combination with therapies to address negative aspects of a client situation, therapists using intentional positive trait development could support recovery, resilience, hope, wisdom, thriving, and all of the benefits positive psychology has correlated to the presence of positive personality traits. Future studies building on this research may include a longitudinal study to understand what situations and character types are most conducive for positive trait development, as well as questions regarding which traits appear in which mentoring situations

Midlife Suicide: Examination Through an Ecological and Interpersonal Lens

Suicide has increased over the past decade among midlife adults in the United States. It is the fourth leading cause of death among persons aged 35–54 years and the eighth leading cause of death among persons aged 55–64 years. The primary purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study is to examine, describe, and understand the lived experiences of midlife adults who have contemplated suicide and who have sought assistance and support from their peers via an online forum for those with an interest in and/or history of suicidality. Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) bioecological model, Joiner’s (2005) interpersonal theory of suicide, and van Manen’s (1990) phenomenological method provide lenses through which these experiences may be understood. The four categories that emerged from the data include the following: biopsychosocial considerations, specifically physical decline and economic risk; mental health concerns stemming from psychiatric illness; connectivity with others; and a desire to end pain. The findings suggest that experiencing suicidality as a midlife adult is a largely isolating experience and that online forums may provide a respite from loneliness and disconnection. This inquiry identifies relevant implications for counselor education and counseling practice as well as offering suggestions for future research

Using the Android Tablet to develop a game platform for older adults

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Driving and Community Mobility: An Online Educational Program for Generalist Occupational Therapy Practitioners

Driving is an important daily activity that often goes unnoticed, yet it enables individuals to engage in crucial tasks such as grocery shopping, going to work, and participating in social activities. Occupational therapy (OT) practitioners must recognize and address the significance of driving in their daily routines to promote clients\u27 independence and fulfillment. However, despite being well-equipped to assist clients with driving-related issues, many practitioners avoid or neglect this area of occupation. A reluctance to addressing driving and community mobility (DCM) can arise from a lack of confidence, available resources, support, or fear of losing a client\u27s trust. These barriers can be traced back to insufficient education on OT’s role in DCM. By enhancing awareness and comprehension of the importance of addressing driving in OT, we can ensure that clients receive comprehensive support to lead independent and fulfilling lives.The goal of this doctoral capstone was to assess the impact of an online education program titled OT\u27s Role with Driving on the perceived knowledge and confidence of OT practitioners in addressing their client\u27s DCM concerns. The study aimed to explore the research question: As measured by self-report, can an online education program enhance the generalist occupational therapy practitioners\u27 self-perceived knowledge and confidence in occupational therapy’s role in driving and community mobility? The author hypothesized that the OT practitioners who participated in the program would report higher levels of knowledge and confidence in DCM after completing the online education program

A COST-EFFECTIVENESS APPROACH TO CALCULATING SROI FOR INTEGRATED AND INTEROPERABLE HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES IN A LOCAL HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT

Background Human services and welfare systems are essential elements of modern day societies. When operated efficiently, they provide a safety net for citizens who are unable to provide for themselves. Traditionally, the development of these programs has been independent of each other and each has its own separate legacy system of funding mechanisms, legal frameworks, management, bureaucracy, and information systems. However, overlaps in the scopes of these programs allow for redundancies and ultimately waste of program resources, and result in under coverage of their target populations, and at times the growth of social disparities and inequalities- exactly the opposite of what these programs were designed to reduce. With the rapid growth of information technologies (IT) and electronic communication networks, interoperability has emerged as a potential solution to the problem of silo welfare programs. Local health and human services departments are being encouraged to adopt a “no wrong door” approach under which their clients, regardless of the service the client applies for, can receive an array of needed services. The Intensive Case Management Calculator (ICMC) uses a cost effectiveness approach to calculate the Social Return on Investment (SROI) of the implementation of interoperable health and human services systems. Methods The ICMC, as developed, uses six specified personas, interviews with county healthcare executives, and a systematic literature review to gather evidence on the costs and benefits of the implementation of interoperability (To Be) and the lack of interoperability (As Is). The six personas represent complicated cases that use multiple services, and would potentially benefit the most from interoperability. These include ‘A child aging out of disabilities program’, ‘A pregnant teenager’, ‘A child aging out of foster care programs’, ‘A homeless young adult’, ‘A homeless family’, and ‘A homeless adult’. The ICMC employs a decision-tree-based model to compare the expected costs and benefits and to calculate the value added from interoperability. For a complete social perspective required for a Social Return on Investment (SROI) model, the ICMC considers three perspectives: client, social direct, and social indirect in addition to a total social perspective. The ICMC also performs a sensitivity analysis of the results, in addition to baseline costs and benefits. In order to test the robustness of the ICMC in accommodating various personas, after the development of the original ICMC, a modified ICMC was developed and tested with a newly created persona of ‘A victim of domestic violence’ replacing the persona of ‘A child aging out of disabilities program.’ The use of the modified ICMC allowed for the external verification and the retrofitting of the ICMC. Results The base-case analysis shows that, with the exception of children aging out of foster care, and the homeless youth personas, for all personas, an investment in interoperability is more costly than the alternative of no investment. However, from the total social perspective, the benefits of implementing interoperability exceed the costs for all personas. Beside the Homeless Family persona, the cost of implementing interoperability is below the chosen Willingness to Pay (WTP) threshold of $100,000 per client improved. The sensitivity analysis reveals broad ranges for the estimation of costs and benefits. Many of the cost ranges exceeded the WTP by multiples of ten or even one hundred folds. Conclusion Since the expected benefits of this investment are greater than the expected costs, and the expected costs per client “saved” are less than the WTP, investment in interoperability is prudent. Given the broad ranges of the sensitivity analysis results, careful, and continuous formative evaluation of the costs and the outcomes is highly recommended. Managers should give emphasis to the continuous evaluation of parameters that the sensitivity analysis deems may have the largest impact on the total investment results

Money & Trust in Digital Society, Bitcoin and Stablecoins in ML enabled Metaverse Telecollaboration

We present a state of the art and positioning book, about Digital society tools, namely; Web3, Bitcoin, Metaverse, AI/ML, accessibility, safeguarding and telecollaboration. A high level overview of Web3 technologies leads to a description of blockchain, and the Bitcoin network is specifically selected for detailed examination. Suitable components of the extended Bitcoin ecosystem are described in more depth. Other mechanisms for native digital value transfer are described, with a focus on `money'. Metaverse technology is over-viewed, primarily from the perspective of Bitcoin and extended reality. Bitcoin is selected as the best contender for value transfer in metaverses because of it's free and open source nature, and network effect. Challenges and risks of this approach are identified. A cloud deployable virtual machine based technology stack deployment guide with a focus on cybersecurity best practice can be downloaded from GitHub to experiment with the technologies. This deployable lab is designed to inform development of secure value transaction, for small and medium sized companies

Help-seeking by older wife caregivers of demented husbands: a grounded theory approach

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of patterns of help seeking by older wife caregivers of demented husbands. Essential to an understanding of service utilization is an understanding of the more basic process of help-seeking.Research to date has largely concentrated on help-seeking as a variable, rather than as an independent entity.Grounded theory methodology with a nursing perspective of health as expanding consciousness, was used to explore interactions, thoughts and feelings associated with patterns of help-seeking by eleven older wife caregivers and allowed for a more holistic view of the process of help-seeking by these older women. This methodology led to discovery of a new substantive theory entitled Help-seeking choices: Taking one day at a time which was grounded in reality as experienced by the participants and illuminates help-seeking for this group of caregivers. The core category of reaching out/reaching within described the main phenomena of wives reaching out to involve both informal and formal sources and reaching within themselves to manage care and seek help on a day-to-day basis. Wives made choices to employ strategies of avoiding,shouldering and facing to accomplish continuing to provide care at home for the husbands. These choices were influenced by a myriad of facilitating and hindering intervening conditions.Understanding obtained from the study indicates that earlier screening and intervention are essential to assisting with identification of dementia and to help caregivers realize that a problem exists. Further suggestion is for more comprehensive case management across health care settings for this group, and a recognition of the impact of previous experiences on future health choices by these caregivers. The Importance of pattern recognition which enables caregivers to view, seek, and manage their husbands\u27 health care in creative ways is also indicated. Understanding gained may lead ultimately to the development of interventions which can increase the effectiveness of help-seeking patterns, result in more appropriate utilization of formal and informal resources, reduce burden and stress associated with the caregiving role, and assist women to sustain the caregiving role

On the Security of Software Systems and Services

This work investigates new methods for facing the security issues and threats arising from the composition of software. This task has been carried out through the formal modelling of both the software composition scenarios and the security properties, i.e., policies, to be guaranteed. Our research moves across three different modalities of software composition which are of main interest for some of the most sensitive aspects of the modern information society. They are mobile applications, trust-based composition and service orchestration. Mobile applications are programs designed for being deployable on remote platforms. Basically, they are the main channel for the distribution and commercialisation of software for mobile devices, e.g., smart phones and tablets. Here we study the security threats that affect the application providers and the hosting platforms. In particular, we present a programming framework for the development of applications with a static and dynamic security support. Also, we implemented an enforcement mechanism for applying fine-grained security controls on the execution of possibly malicious applications. In addition to security, trust represents a pragmatic and intuitive way for managing the interactions among systems. Currently, trust is one of the main factors that human beings keep into account when deciding whether to accept a transaction or not. In our work we investigate the possibility of defining a fully integrated environment for security policies and trust including a runtime monitor. Finally, Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is the leading technology for business applications distributed over a network. The security issues related to the service networks are many and multi-faceted. We mainly deal with the static verification of secure composition plans of web services. Moreover, we introduce the synthesis of dynamic security checks for protecting the services against illegal invocations

Caring for the Future: The Power and Potential of Americas Direct Care Workforce

This report is the culmination of a year-long series of reports (released throughout 2020) providing a comprehensive, current-day analysis of the direct care workforce and its critical role in the long-term care system in the United States. By bringing these reports together, this final report provides: a detailed profile of these workers; a segmented look at the long-term care industry; a discussion on the evolving role of the direct care worker; a proposed framework for creating quality jobs in direct care; and a look forward at where this workforce and industry are heading. The report also offers concrete recommendations for policymakers, employers, advocates, and other long-term care leaders, and features stories of direct care workers from around the country, sharing their wisdom and ideas. In releasing this report, our goal is to strengthen the national dialogue on the direct care workforce, including what needs to change in policy and in practice.workforce,including what needs to change in policy and in practice