Non-Dominant Hand Performance on the Rey Complex Figure Test across Five Age Groups

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the ROCFT performance across five age groups when individuals used their non-dominant hand for the copy, immediate recall, and delayed recall conditions. In doing so, we aimed to establish an age-related set of nondominant-hand scores that could be used for determining the relative performance of individuals with left brain damage who are forced to use their nondominant hand for this test

Rubric scoring of a clinical test of executive functioning

Executive functions (EF) are complex abilities that allow one to successfully complete independent, deliberate, and novel goal-directed activities (Lezak, Howieson, & Loring, 2004). EF tests require solving problems with minimal direction from the examiner (Baddeley, 1992; Shallice & Burgess, 1991). Because EF skills tend to show up globally, Lezak et al. (2004) suggested clinicians will learn more about one’s EF abilities by observing how he or she goes about solving a problem than from a test score. If this is the case, a “rubric” score that took into consideration “how” a problem was solved may provide the clinician with better information for treatment planning than a test score, as long as it did not greatly affect test sensitivity or specificity. Sensitivity and specificity are important factors in determining the usefulness of EF tests. Sensitivity refers to the probability of identifying abnormal functioning in an impaired individual or “hit rate” of a test, whereas specificity reflects the probability of correctly identifying healthy individual with the test (Cartoni & Lincoln, 2005; Kiel & Kaszniak, 2002). Rubrics are useful scoring tools that divide tasks into component elements and provide a description of levels of performance for each element (Goodrich, 2005; Hanna & Smith, 1998). Rubrics have been widely used to assess student performance (Andrade, 2000; Falchikov, 1986; Goodrich, 1997), but have not been used to score EF tests. The aim of this study was to examine sensitivity and specificity for a clinical test of EF, the Rapid Assessment of Problem Solving test (RAPS) when scored with a rubric that allowed the examiner to describe the quality of performance using a standard that was developed from a large body of normative research. This differs from using the three traditional test scores from the RAPS that require time intensive calculations

How German hospitals govern IT - An empirical exploration

Health care services in German hospitals are causing immense expenses. Successful IT Governance might help to support specific challenges for every organization with an adequate use of IT. The market structure of hospitals in Germany is very heterogeneous, e.g. in size and sponsorship. This paper analyses the state of the art of IT Governance based on a survey among 220 IT executives in German hospitals. The quantitative analyses of collected survey data reveal that hospitals govern their IT differently according to size and sponsorship. In addition, our analyses show that decision-making authority for the IT budget rises with hospital size and is positively correlated with the fraction of IT projects in the overall IT budget. We also show that the investments in innovative IT projects increase with hospital size. Our study revealed that a high number of private and larger hospitals lack a systematic IT Governance approach within the decision domain on IT projects. This study is the first to shed light into the empirical situation of IT Governance in German hospitals. Creativity-intensive processes such as the development of marketing campaigns or the production of visual effects increasingly find their way into the agenda of process managers. Such processes often comprise of both well-structured, transactional parts and creative parts that often cannot be specified in terms of their process flow, required resources, and outcome. Moreover, the processes’ high variability sets boundaries for the possible degree of automation. In this paper we introduce the concept of pockets of creativity as an analytic device which is hoped to support process managers in their efforts to identify and describe creative sections in business processes. We argue that this step of identifying and describing is imperative to successfully allocate resources, integrate creativity into the overall process, and introduce process automation for those parts that are well-structured and can actually be automated. Our argument rests in the examination of existent literature as well as in findings from exploratory case studies that were conducted in the film and visual effects industry in order to study processes that rely on creativity

Business process documentation in creative work systems:a design science study in television production

Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht den Einfluss von Kreativität auf die Modellierung und Dokumentation von Geschäftsprozessen. Dabei wird ausgehend von einer theoretischen Basis eine Methode entwickelt, die die Erfassung kreativitätsintensiver Prozesse ermöglicht. Deren Besonderheit ist, dass sie das in der Prozessmodellierung vorherrschende strenge Kontrollflussparadigma aufbricht, um so dem Anspruch kreativer Arbeitssysteme an Flexibilität gerecht zu werden. Ausgehend vom kreativen Produkt werden dabei sukzessiv kreative Teilprozesse von administrativen Aufgaben isoliert, um so ein angemessenes Management beider zu ermöglichen. Die Methode wird in einer umfassenden Studie im Kontext der Fernsehproduktion in Deutschland evaluiert. Auf Basis semi-strukturierter Interviews werden dabei umfassende Modelle für die Produktlinien TV-Film, Serie, Daily Soap und Entertainment diskutiert. Die Ergebnisse werden abschließend auf die Methode und die zu Grunde liegende Theorie zurückgespiegelt.This study investigates the influence of creativity on the modeling and documentation of business processes. Based on a substantive theory a modeling method is developed that allows for the capturing of creativity-intensive processes. This method discards a strict and formal interpretation of the predominant control-flow paradigm in process modeling and thus conforms to the flexibility requirements of creative work systems. Emanating from the creative product, creative and administrative subprocesses are successively revealed, thus enabling the adequate management of both process types. The method is applied to the context of German television production. Comprising process models for the product lines television movie, primetime series, daily soap and entertainment are derived from qualitative interview data. The results of this evaluation are fed back to both the method as well as the foundational theory

On the structured distance to uncontrollability

This article is concerned with the structured distance to uncontrollability of a linear time-invariant system and relates this concept to a variation of the μ-value. The developed framework is applied to derive computational expressions for the class of real perturbations as well as for Hermitian, symmetric, and skew-symmetric perturbations in a relatively simple manner. Examples demonstrate that the structured distance can differ from the standard, unstructured distance to uncontrollability by an arbitrary amount. It is also shown how systems of higher order can be addressed. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved