Advancing the Empirical Research on Lobbying

This essay identifies the empirical facts about lobbying which are generally agreed upon in the literature. It then discusses challenges to empirical research in lobbying and provides examples of empirical methods that can be employed to overcome these challenges—with an emphasis on statistical measurement, identification, and casual inference. The essay then discusses the advantages, disadvantages, and effective use of the main types of data available for research in lobbying. It closes by discussing a number of open questions for researchers in the field and avenues for future work to advance the empirical research in lobbying

The Student Experience of Other Students

The literature on higher education classroom climate and its relationship to teaching and learning is dominated by studies and theorizing regarding the role of the instructor. But when instructors use learner-centered approaches and diffuse the role and authority of the teacher, students gain a higher level of influence in the learning experience of their peers. In this phenomenological case study of a unique graduate seminar, I interpreted the thematic structure of the student experience of other students (SEOS). Data sources included field notes, audio recordings of class sessions, weekly student post-class reflections, and individual and focus group interviews with students. Students experienced each other as “All Together in This Space,” the context of their experience in which the following themes were figural: Student “Investment” was described in terms of subthemes “Responsibility,” “Getting Hands Dirty,” and “Genuineness;” students were “Completely Caught Up” in each other’s stories and course content, and the experience of other students “Spilled Out” of the typical classroom setting; and students experienced “Coming to Appreciate Variations” in a learning progression that included subthemes of “Diversity,” “Seeing Variations,” and “Changes in Being.” The transformational learning students described as part of their SEOS included valuing things they did not value before, changes in perspective on major areas of life like time, and the ability to listen even in the face of strong disagreement. Thus, a strength of this study is its ability to capture longitudinal progression over the academic semester. The results from this study provide a unique contribution to the fields of classroom climate and transformative learning with a road map that instructors can use to help their students engage more deeply with course content and each other and a classroom climate framework that can guide course design

Phenomenology and Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDAS): A Careful Reconciliation

An oft-cited phenomenological methodologist, Max VAN MANEN (2014), claims that qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) is not an appropriate tool for phenomenological research. Yet phenomenologists rarely describe how phenomenology is to be done: pencil, paper, computer? DAVIDSON and DI GREGORIO (2011) urge QDAS contrarians such as VAN MANEN to get over their methodological loyalties and join the digital world, claiming that all qualitative researchers, whatever their methodology, perform processes aided by QDAS: disaggregation and recontextualization of texts. Other phenomenologists exemplify DAVIDSON and DI GREGORIO's observation that arguments against QDAS often identify problems more closely related to the researchers than QDAS. But the concerns about technology of McLUHAN (2003 [1964]), HEIDEGGER (2008 [1977]), and FLUSSER (2013) cannot be ignored. In this conceptual article I answer the questions of phenomenologists and the call of QDAS methodologists to describe how I used QDAS to carry out a phenomenological study in order to guide others who choose to reconcile the use of software to assist their research.Ein häufig zitierter Phänomenologe, Max VAN MANEN (2014), erachtet qualitative Datenanalyse-Software (QDAS) als ungeeignet für phänomenologische Forschung, und Phänomenolog/innen diskutieren nur selten, wie geforscht werden sollte: mit Stift, Papier, Computer? DAVIDSON und DI GREGORIO (2011) laden QDAS-Kritiker/innen wie VAN MANEN ein, ihre methodologische Loyalität zu überdenken und an der digitalen Welt teilzuhaben, zumal alle qualitativen Forscher/innen unabhängig von ihrer methodologischen Präferenz bei der Erschließung und Rekontextualisierung von Texten QDAS-gestützte Mittel nutzten. Auch einige Phänomenlog/innen haben die Beobachtung von DAVIDSON und DI GREGORIO gestützt und verdeutlicht, dass Argumente gegen QDAS häufig auf Probleme der Forschenden und nicht der Software verweisen. Dennoch können Einwände z.B. von McLUHAN (2003 [1964]), HEIDEGGER (2008 [1977]) oder FLUSSER (2013) gegen die Nutzung von Technologie nicht ignoriert werden. In diesem Beitrag begegne ich den Fragen von Phänomenlog/innen einerseits und von QDAS-konformen Methodolog/innen andererseits, indem ich zeige, wie ich QDAS im Rahmen einer phänomenologischen Studie eingesetzt habe, auch um anderen Hinweise zu geben, die sich für die Verwendung von Software für die Umsetzung ihrer Forschungsarbeiten entscheiden

Referring Expression Generation Challenge 2008 DIT System Description

This section describes the two systems developed at DIT for the attribute selection track of the REG 2008 challenge. Both of theses systems use an incremental greedy search to generate descriptions, similar to the incremental algorithm described in (Dale and Reiter, 1995). The output of these incremental algorithms are, to a large extent, determined by the order in which the algorithm tests the target object’s attributes for inclusion in the description. Indeed, the major difference between the two systems described in this section is the mechanism used to order the attributes for inclusion

A Review of Negation in Clinical Texts

Negation is commonly seen in clinical documents [Chapman et al., 2001a] ”In clinical reports the presence of a term does not necessarily indicate the presence of the clinical condition represented by that term. In fact, many of the most frequently described findings and diseases in discharge summaries, radiology reports, history and physical exams, and other transcribed reports are denied in the patient” [Chapman et al., 2001b, page. 301]

Assessing the Usefulness of Different Feature Sets for Predicting the Comprehension Difficulty of Text

Within English second language acquisition there is an enthusiasm for using authentic text as learning materials in classroom and online settings. This enthusiasm, however, is tempered by the difficulty in finding authentic texts at suitable levels of comprehension difficulty for specific groups of learners. An automated way to rate the comprehension difficulty of a text would make finding suitable texts a much more manageable task. While readability metrics have been in use for over 50 years now they only capture a small amount of what constitutes comprehension difficulty. In this paper we examine other features of texts that are related to comprehension difficulty and assess their usefulness in building automated prediction models. We investigate readability metrics, vocabulary-based features, and syntax-based features, and show that the best prediction accuracies are possible with a combination of all three

A Hybrid Agent-Based and Equation Based Model for the Spread of Infectious Diseases

Both agent-based models and equation-based models can be used to model the spread of an infectious disease. Equation-based models have been shown to capture the overall dynamics of a disease outbreak while agent-based models are able to capture heterogeneous characteristics of agents that drive the spread of an outbreak. However, agent-based models are computationally intensive. To capture the advantages of both the equation-based and agent-based models, we create a hybrid model where the disease component of the hybrid model switches between agent-based and equation-based. The switch is determined using the number of agents infected. We first test the model at the town level and then the county level investigating different switch values and geographic levels of switching. We find that a hybrid model is able to save time compared to a fully agent-based model without losing a significant amount of fidelity

An Investigation into the Semantics of English Topological Prepositions

This paper describes a psycholinguistic experiment that investigates whether the applicability of the topological spatial prepositions at , on or in to describe the spatial configuration between two objects is related to the topological relationships between objects being describe

The Code Mini-Map Visualisation - Encoding Conceptual Structures Within Source Code

Modern source code editors typically include a code mini-map visualisation, which provides programmers with an overview of the currently open source code document. This paper proposes to add a layering mechanism to the code mini-map visualisation in order to provide programmers with visual answers to questions related to conceptual structures that are not manifested directly in the code

Scoped: Evaluating A Composite Visualisation Of The Scope Chain Hierarchy Within Source Code

This paper presents two studies that evaluate the effectiveness of a software visualisation tool which uses a com- posite visualisation to encode the scope chain and information related to the scope chain within source code. The first study evaluates the effectiveness of adding the composite visualisation to a source code editor to help programmers understand scope relationships within source code. The second study evaluates the effectiveness of each individual component within the composite visualisation. The composite visualisation is composed of a packed circle tree diagram (overview component) and a list view (detail view component). The packed circle tree functions as an abstract mini-map to provide viewers with a high-level overview of the scope chain hierarchy within a source code document. The list view provides additional information about identifiers (variables, functions, and parameters) that are accessible from the scope within which the cursor is located, in the source code document. Both studies utilise a between-subject design, in which groups of participants were presented with source code fragments and asked to answer a series of code understanding questions. The results of the studies indicate that adding a composite visualisation to a source code editor can have a positive effect on code understanding, especially when the textual representation of the code no longer corresponds to the actual behaviour of the code (as is the case, for example, in languages such as JavaScript that implement variable hoisting)