The development of a model for predicting passenger acceptance of short-haul air transportation systems

Meaningful criteria and methodology for assessing, particularly in the area of ride quality, the potential acceptability to the traveling public of present and future transportation systems were investigated. Ride quality was found to be one of the important variables affecting the decision of users of air transportation, and to be influenced by several environmental factors, especially motion, noise, pressure, temperature, and seating. Models were developed to quantify the relationship of subjective comfort to all of these parameters and then were exercised for a variety of situations. Passenger satisfaction was found to be strongly related to ride quality and was so modeled. A computer program was developed to assess the comfort and satisfaction levels of passengers on aircraft subjected to arbitrary flight profiles over arbitrary terrain. A model was deduced of the manner in which passengers integrate isolated segments of a flight to obtain an overall trip comfort rating. A method was established for assessing the influence of other links (e.g., access, terminal conditions) in the overall passenger trip

Passenger ride quality determined from commercial airline flights

The University of Virginia ride-quality research program is reviewed. Data from two flight programs, involving seven types of aircraft, are considered in detail. An apparatus for measuring physical variations in the flight environment and recording the subjective reactions of test subjects is described. Models are presented for predicting the comfort response of test subjects from the physical data, and predicting the overall comfort reaction of test subjects from their moment by moment responses. The correspondence of mean passenger comfort judgments and test subject response is shown. Finally, the models of comfort response based on data from the 5-point and 7-point comfort scales are shown to correspond

Application of ride quality technology to predict ride satisfaction for commuter-type aircraft

A method was developed to predict passenger satisfaction with the ride environment of a transportation vehicle. This method, a general approach, was applied to a commuter-type aircraft for illustrative purposes. The effect of terrain, altitude and seat location were examined. The method predicts the variation in passengers satisfied for any set of flight conditions. In addition several noncommuter aircraft were analyzed for comparison and other uses of the model described. The method has advantages for design, evaluation, and operating decisions

Impact of expanding SSI on Medicaid expenditures of disabled children.

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) expansions for disabled children in the early 1990s provoked criticism that eligibility criteria were too lax and motivated the subsequent retraction of benefits for many children. However, little evidence exists on whether the clinical needs of SSI children declined during this period. The authors used Medicaid data to examine changes in average expenditures between 1989 and 1992, using an Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) comparison group to control for confounding time trends (e.g., in access). Results showed declines in average expenditures in Georgia and Tennessee but increases in California and Michigan, which are thought to have started with more liberal eligibility policies

Human factors in design of passenger seats for commercial aircraft: A review

Seat comfort and safety research since the early part of the century is reviewed. The approach blends empirical and theoretical human factors and technical knowledge of seated humans under static and dynamic conditions experienced on commercial aircraft

Investigating the information-seeking behaviour of academic lawyers: From Ellis's model to design.

Information-seeking is important for lawyers, who have access to many dedicated electronic resources.However there is considerable scope for improving the design of these resources to better support information-seeking. One way of informing design is to use information-seeking models as theoretical lenses to analyse users’ behaviour with existing systems. However many models, including those informed by studying lawyers, analyse information-seeking at a high level of abstraction and are only likely to lead to broad-scoped design insights. We illustrate that one potentially useful (and lowerlevel) model is Ellis’s - by using it as a lens to analyse and make design suggestions based on the information-seeking behaviour of twenty-seven academic lawyers, who were asked to think aloud whilst using electronic legal resources to find information for their work. We identify similar information-seeking behaviours to those originally found by Ellis and his colleagues in scientific domains, along with several that were not identified in previous studies such as ‘updating’ (which we believe is particularly pertinent to legal information-seeking). We also present a refinement of Ellis’s model based on the identification of several levels that the behaviours were found to operate at and the identification of sets of mutually exclusive subtypes of behaviours

Transportation systems evaluation methodology development and applications, phase 3

Transportation systems or proposed changes in current systems are evaluated. Four principal evaluation criteria are incorporated in the process, operating performance characteristics as viewed by potential users, decisions based on the perceived impacts of the system, estimating what is required to reduce the system to practice; and predicting the ability of the concept to attract financial support. A series of matrix multiplications in which the various matrices represent evaluations in a logical sequence of the various discrete steps in a management decision process is used. One or more alternatives are compared with the current situation, and the result provides a numerical rating which determines the desirability of each alternative relative to the norm and to each other. The steps in the decision process are isolated so that contributions of each to the final result are readily analyzed. The ability to protect against bias on the part of the evaluators, and the fact that system parameters which are basically qualitative in nature can be easily included are advantageous

Incorporating user search behaviour into relevance feedback

In this paper we present five user experiments on incorporating behavioural information into the relevance feedback process. In particular we concentrate on ranking terms for query expansion and selecting new terms to add to the user's query. Our experiments are an attempt to widen the evidence used for relevance feedback from simply the relevant documents to include information on how users are searching. We show that this information can lead to more successful relevance feedback techniques. We also show that the presentation of relevance feedback to the user is important in the success of relevance feedback

A method for the determination of potentially profitable service patterns for commuter air carriers

A methodology for estimating market conception was developed as a part of the short-haul air transportation program. It is based upon an analysis of actual documents which provide a record of known travel history. Applying this methodology a forecast was made of the demand for an air feeder service between Charlottesville, Virginia and Dulles International Airport. Local business travel vouchers and local travel agent records were selected to provide the documentation. The market was determined to be profitable for an 8-passenger Cessna 402B aircraft flying a 2-hour daily service pattern designed to mesh to the best extent possible with the connecting schedules at Dulles. The Charlottesville - Dulles air feeder service market conception forecast and its methodology are documented

Proceedings and findings of the 1976 Workshop on Ride Quality

The workshop was organized around the study of the three basic transfer functions required to evaluate and/or predict passenger acceptance of transportation systems: These are the vehicle, passenger, and value transfer functions. For the purpose of establishing working groups corresponding to the basic transfer functions, it was decided to split the vehicle transfer function into two distinct groups studying surface vehicles and air/marine vehicles, respectively