Pilot Study, Does It Really Matter? Learning Lessons from Conducting a Pilot Study for a Qualitative PhD Thesis

A Pilot Study (PS) is a small-scale research project conducted before the final full-scale study. A PS helps researchers to test in reality how likely the research process is to work, in order to help them decide how best to conduct the final research study. In piloting a study, a researcher can identify or refine a research question, discover what methods are best for pursuing it, and estimate how much time and what resources will be necessary to complete the larger final version of the study. There is, however, a paucity in literature that focuses on using, reading and representing PSs. This article discusses the importance of a PS to test and identify how methods and ideas would work in practice when undertaking a qualitative PhD thesis. The proposed PS in this paper addressed many challenges, and the researcher reflected on different perspectives of their work including ethical, cultural, social and professional issues. By the end of the PhD thesis, undertaken with the guidance of the PS, it was found that a well-conducted PS, giving a clear list of aims and objectives within a formal framework, can encourage methodological rigour and ensure the validity of both the study itself and the methodology applied. The objectives of this paper are thus threefold: first, to identify the issues within a specific qualitative PS prior to conducting the final study; second, to address the researcher’s reflections on these findings and finally, to share the experiences and knowledge that a PS can be expected to bring

A Model-Driven approach for functional test case generation

Test phase is one of the most critical phases in software engineering life cycle to assure the final system quality. In this context, functional system test cases verify that the system under test fulfills its functional specification. Thus, these test cases are frequently designed from the different scenarios and alternatives depicted in functional requirements. The objective of this paper is to introduce a systematic process based on the Model-Driven paradigm to automate the generation of functional test cases from functional requirements. For this aim, a set of metamodels and transformations and also a specific language domain to use them is presented. The paper finishes stating learned lessons from the trenches as well as relevant future work and conclusions that draw new research lines in the test cases generation context.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-

How strange a non-strange heavy baryon?

We give some general arguments in favor of the large magnitude of matrix elements of an operator associated with nonvalence quarks in heavy hadrons. We estimate a strange matrix element for \Lambda_b baryon whose valence content is b, u, d quarks. We find a noticeable contribution of the strange quark into the heavy baryon mass on the level 200-300 MeV. The arguments are based on the QCD sum rules and low energy theorems. The physical picture behind of the phenomenon is somewhat similar to the one associated with the large strange content of the nucleon where matrix element. We discuss some possible applications of the obtained result.Comment: A final version to appear in Phys. Lett. B. New section on the violation of the Zweig's rule is adde

The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018-2019

An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains

Managing Intellectual Property to Foster Agricultural Development

Over the past decades, consideration of IPRs has become increasingly important in many areas of agricultural development, including foreign direct investment, technology transfer, trade, investment in innovation, access to genetic resources, and the protection of traditional knowledge. The widening role of IPRs in governing the ownership of—and access to—innovation, information, and knowledge makes them particularly critical in ensuring that developing countries benefit from the introduction of new technologies that could radically alter the welfare of the poor. Failing to improve IPR policies and practices to support the needs of developing countries will eliminate significant development opportunities. The discussion in this note moves away from policy prescriptions to focus on investments to improve how IPRs are used in practice in agricultural development. These investments must be seen as complementary to other investments in agricultural development. IPRs are woven into the context of innovation and R&D. They can enable entrepreneurship and allow the leveraging of private resources for resolving the problems of poverty. Conversely, IPRs issues can delay important scientific advancements, deter investment in products for the poor, and impose crippling transaction costs on organizations if the wrong tools are used or tools are badly applied. The central benefit of pursuing the investments outlined in this note is to build into the system a more robust capacity for strategic and flexible use of IPRs tailored to development goals

A safer place for patients: learning to improve patient safety

1 Every day over one million people are treated successfully by National Health Service (NHS) acute, ambulance and mental health trusts. However, healthcare relies on a range of complex interactions of people, skills, technologies and drugs, and sometimes things do go wrong. For most countries, patient safety is now the key issue in healthcare quality and risk management. The Department of Health (the Department) estimates that one in ten patients admitted to NHS hospitals will be unintentionally harmed, a rate similar to other developed countries. Around 50 per cent of these patient safety incidentsa could have been avoided, if only lessons from previous incidents had been learned. 2 There are numerous stakeholders with a role in keeping patients safe in the NHS, many of whom require trusts to report details of patient safety incidents and near misses to them (Figure 2). However, a number of previous National Audit Office reports have highlighted concerns that the NHS has limited information on the extent and impact of clinical and non-clinical incidents and trusts need to learn from these incidents and share good practice across the NHS more effectively (Appendix 1). 3 In 2000, the Chief Medical Officer’s report An organisation with a memory 1 , identified that the key barriers to reducing the number of patient safety incidents were an organisational culture that inhibited reporting and the lack of a cohesive national system for identifying and sharing lessons learnt. 4 In response, the Department published Building a safer NHS for patients3 detailing plans and a timetable for promoting patient safety. The goal was to encourage improvements in reporting and learning through the development of a new mandatory national reporting scheme for patient safety incidents and near misses. Central to the plan was establishing the National Patient Safety Agency to improve patient safety by reducing the risk of harm through error. The National Patient Safety Agency was expected to: collect and analyse information; assimilate other safety-related information from a variety of existing reporting systems; learn lessons and produce solutions. 5 We therefore examined whether the NHS has been successful in improving the patient safety culture, encouraging reporting and learning from patient safety incidents. Key parts of our approach were a census of 267 NHS acute, ambulance and mental health trusts in Autumn 2004, followed by a re-survey in August 2005 and an omnibus survey of patients (Appendix 2). We also reviewed practices in other industries (Appendix 3) and international healthcare systems (Appendix 4), and the National Patient Safety Agency’s progress in developing its National Reporting and Learning System (Appendix 5) and other related activities (Appendix 6). 6 An organisation with a memory1 was an important milestone in the NHS’s patient safety agenda and marked the drive to improve reporting and learning. At the local level the vast majority of trusts have developed a predominantly open and fair reporting culture but with pockets of blame and scope to improve their strategies for sharing good practice. Indeed in our re-survey we found that local performance had continued to improve with more trusts reporting having an open and fair reporting culture, more trusts with open reporting systems and improvements in perceptions of the levels of under-reporting. At the national level, progress on developing the national reporting system for learning has been slower than set out in the Department’s strategy of 2001 3 and there is a need to improve evaluation and sharing of lessons and solutions by all organisations with a stake in patient safety. There is also no clear system for monitoring that lessons are learned at the local level. Specifically: a The safety culture within trusts is improving, driven largely by the Department’s clinical governance initiative 4 and the development of more effective risk management systems in response to incentives under initiatives such as the NHS Litigation Authority’s Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (Appendix 7). However, trusts are still predominantly reactive in their response to patient safety issues and parts of some organisations still operate a blame culture. b All trusts have established effective reporting systems at the local level, although under-reporting remains a problem within some groups of staff, types of incidents and near misses. The National Patient Safety Agency did not develop and roll out the National Reporting and Learning System by December 2002 as originally envisaged. All trusts were linked to the system by 31 December 2004. By August 2005, at least 35 trusts still had not submitted any data to the National Reporting and Learning System. c Most trusts pointed to specific improvements derived from lessons learnt from their local incident reporting systems, but these are still not widely promulgated, either within or between trusts. The National Patient Safety Agency has provided only limited feedback to trusts of evidence-based solutions or actions derived from the national reporting system. It published its first feedback report from the Patient Safety Observatory in July 2005

Managing collaborative processes for natural resources

A new style of natural resource decision-making is under development in the United States that has evolved from the approach that dominated the last hundred years. The historical implementation of natural resource policy has been characterized as top down where a highly compartmentalized bureaucratic structure dominated the management of natural resources through policies focused on outputs and guided by scientific management. The historical implementation of natural resource policy frames the resolution of conflicting goals as mutually exclusive, which has led to fierce competition for the power necessary for one goal to dominate over another. Collaboration and ecosystem management policy approaches were largely born out of the recognition that the historical implementation of natural resource policy has been ineffective at resolving conflict due to the narrow approaches available in the courts and administrative appeals. Collaborative policy processes have been characterized as bottom up, rather than top down, recognizing that no one group is the dominant decision maker in the current reality of a shared power world. Collaborative policy processes are comprehensive in addressing multiple natural resource values and interests, have socially defined goals and objectives, include more voluntary than regulatory policies, and rely on integrated holistic knowledge. Given the monumental differences between the historical implementation of natural resource policy and the current shift to collaborative policy processes, this change is often referred to as a paradigm shift. The goal of this research was to more fully understand this new style of decision making, collaboration, through examining the growing literature base and case analysis of participants\u27 experiences in collaboration. Collaborative process principles identified in the literature coupled with participant experiences of those principles in collaborative processes provided lessons learned to help inform our society on how to make the transition from our past adversarial, split the stakes processes and our future with collaborative processes. The collaborative process principles identified in the literature focused on who was involved and how (process) people were involved in two specific areas of collaboration: how decisions are negotiated, and data and information management. Eleven principles to guide negotiations in collaborative policy processes were identified. Six principles to guide data and information management in collaborative policy processes were identified. Together these principles comprise a template to guide how an effective collaborative process needed to be managed, and provided a lens through which to analyze the cases. This template was compared to real life participant experiences in collaboration and several lessons learned were gleaned from the combination of theory and empirical evidence. Perhaps the most important lesson learned in this research was the importance of process management. A rigorous application of the principles of the collaborative process was important to provide procedural due process and a legitimate process that was perceived as fair and just to all interests involved. Collaboration required the balancing of tensions of several inherent paradoxes, and to do this effectively required process management of the collaborative principles. Involvement shaped real life collaboration, and while participants\u27 perceived inclusive involvement as beneficial, it was no panacea for the complexities of involving the variety of interests engaged in natural resource issues. In real life, a productive role was the true measure of involvement and while this was difficult there were ways, such as the structured use of subgroups, to balance the tensions between inclusive involvement and role efficacy. The involvement of scientists in collaboration must be done carefully because the credibility of scientists in the cases analyzed in this research was compromised. Collaboration required considerable time and skills, but as we continue to practice collaboration the time it takes may be reduced through the improved skills and relationships of participants. Relationships were improved and trust was built between very divided interests in the majority of the cases analyzed in this research and continued experimentation with collaboration may help to build a foundation that will make future collaborative efforts even more positive and successful. Facilitation can also help participants get through the unfamiliar process of collaboration and help develop the people skills necessary for effective collaborations. The incentive to participate in collaboration appeared to be largely born from the conflicts created by the historical implementation of natural resource policy. Collaboration may not be so much of a paradigm shift as it is an evolution since it often depends upon a government role of fostering sustainable natural resource use by establishing standards and targets that result in being the incentive to collaborate. Even though this government role provided the biggest incentive to participate in collaboration, participants in all the cases analyzed in this research recognized the reality of a shared power world. Participants recognized that there were many legitimate and powerful interests that needed to be involved in order to achieve a successful collaboration

The improvement of oral reading in the upper grades

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

What Works? A Study of Effective Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Programs

Examines factors that lead to desirable outcomes in mental health consultation programs: solid program infrastructure, highly qualified consultants, and quality support services. Analyzes targeted outcomes, measurements, and intensity of interventions