Telephone surveys using mobile phones: an analysis of response rates, survey procedures and respondents' characteristics

Telephone surveying has become the major mode of data collection in the sample survey field since the mid 1980s; presently other modes of advanced telecommunication such as mobile phones are fast becoming important supplements and even competitors to the fixed telephones. This paper uses a nationwide dual frame survey of fixed and mobile phone numbers to examine the potential of mobile phones for survey work, the methodological implications of their use and the differences to fixed phones surveys

Streamlining code smells: Using collective intelligence and visualization

Context. Code smells are seen as major source of technical debt and, as such, should be detected and removed. Code smells have long been catalogued with corresponding mitigating solutions called refactoring operations. However, while the latter are supported in current IDEs (e.g., Eclipse), code smells detection scaffolding has still many limitations. Researchers argue that the subjectiveness of the code smells detection process is a major hindrance to mitigate the problem of smells-infected code. Objective. This thesis presents a new approach to code smells detection that we have called CrowdSmelling and the results of a validation experiment for this approach. The latter is based on supervised machine learning techniques, where the wisdom of the crowd (of software developers) is used to collectively calibrate code smells detection algorithms, thereby lessening the subjectivity issue. Method. In the context of three consecutive years of a Software Engineering course, a total “crowd” of around a hundred teams, with an average of three members each, classified the presence of 3 code smells (Long Method, God Class, and Feature Envy) in Java source code. These classifications were the basis of the oracles used for training six machine learning algorithms. Over one hundred models were generated and evaluated to determine which machine learning algorithms had the best performance in detecting each of the aforementioned code smells. Results. Good performances were obtained for God Class detection (ROC=0.896 for Naive Bayes) and Long Method detection (ROC=0.870 for AdaBoostM1), but much lower for Feature Envy (ROC=0.570 for Random Forrest). Conclusions. Obtained results suggest that Crowdsmelling is a feasible approach for the detection of code smells, but further validation experiments are required to cover more code smells and to increase external validityContexto. Os cheiros de código são a principal causa de dívida técnica (technical debt), como tal, devem ser detectados e removidos. Os cheiros de código já foram há muito tempo catalogados juntamente com as correspondentes soluções mitigadoras chamadas operações de refabricação (refactoring). No entanto, embora estas últimas sejam suportadas nas IDEs actuais (por exemplo, Eclipse), a deteção de cheiros de código têm ainda muitas limitações. Os investigadores argumentam que a subjectividade do processo de deteção de cheiros de código é um dos principais obstáculo à mitigação do problema da qualidade do código. Objectivo. Esta tese apresenta uma nova abordagem à detecção de cheiros de código, a que chamámos CrowdSmelling, e os resultados de uma experiência de validação para esta abordagem. A nossa abordagem de CrowdSmelling baseia-se em técnicas de aprendizagem automática supervisionada, onde a sabedoria da multidão (dos programadores de software) é utilizada para calibrar colectivamente algoritmos de detecção de cheiros de código, diminuindo assim a questão da subjectividade. Método. Em três anos consecutivos, no âmbito da Unidade Curricular de Engenharia de Software, uma "multidão", num total de cerca de uma centena de equipas, com uma média de três membros cada, classificou a presença de 3 cheiros de código (Long Method, God Class, and Feature Envy) em código fonte Java. Estas classificações foram a base dos oráculos utilizados para o treino de seis algoritmos de aprendizagem automática. Mais de cem modelos foram gerados e avaliados para determinar quais os algoritmos de aprendizagem de máquinas com melhor desempenho na detecção de cada um dos cheiros de código acima mencionados. Resultados. Foram obtidos bons desempenhos na detecção do God Class (ROC=0,896 para Naive Bayes) e na detecção do Long Method (ROC=0,870 para AdaBoostM1), mas muito mais baixos para Feature Envy (ROC=0,570 para Random Forrest). Conclusões. Os resultados obtidos sugerem que o Crowdsmelling é uma abordagem viável para a detecção de cheiros de código, mas são necessárias mais experiências de validação para cobrir mais cheiros de código e para aumentar a validade externa

Willingness to pay for environmental quality: The effects of pro-environmental behavior, perceived behavior control, environmental activism, and educational level

Environmental quality is one of the major concerns in contemporary societies. The main goal of this research is to investigate citizens’ willingness to pay for environmental quality and whether this propensity differs in line with education level. Structural equation modeling is used to explore the associations between several constructs; specifically, a multigroup analysis is conducted to assess the invariance of two educational level segments. Results suggest that willingness to pay more for environmental quality is positively associated with perceived behavior control and environmental activism. Pro-environmental behavior does not impact willingness to pay for environmental quality but is positively related to perceived behavior control and environmental activism. The relationships between constructs hold true for both groups of education. Implications for public policy and marketing actions are addressed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Index of satisfaction with public transport: a fuzzy clustering approach

Increasing public transport use is recognized by many countries as crucial to the pursuit of a global strategy for environmental sustainability and improving urban mobility. Understanding what users value in a public transport service is essential to carry out this strategy. Using fuzzy clustering, we developed an index that measures individual user satisfaction with the public transport service in the metropolitan area of Lisbon and subsequently identified the possible determinants of satisfaction by means of a regression tree model. The results achieved unveil a hierarchical partition of the data, highlighting the diversified level of satisfaction among public transport users that is reflected in the distribution of the index. The managerial implications of the findings for the public transport service are addressed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The relevance of follow-ups in data collection for the quality assurance system of the Portuguese population and housing census

The operationalization of the Population and Housing Census in Portugal is managed by a hierarchical structure in which Statistics Portugal is at the top and local government institutions at the bottom. When the Census takes place every ten years, local governments are asked to collaborate with Statistics Portugal in the execution and monitoring of the fieldwork operations at the local level. During the Pilot Test stage of the 2011 Census, local governments were asked for additional collaboration: to answer the Perception of Risk survey, whose aim was to gather information to design a quality assurance instrument that could be used to monitor the Census operations. The response rate of the survey was desired to be 100%, however, by the deadline of data collection nearly a quarter of local governments had not responded to the survey and thus a decision was made to make a follow up mailing. In this paper, we examine whether the same conclusions could have been reached from survey without follow ups as with them and evaluate the influence of follow ups on the conception of the quality assurance instrument. Comparison of responses on a set of perception variables revealed that local governments answering previous or after the follow up did not differ. However the configuration of the quality assurance instrument changed when including follow up responses.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Effects of call patterns on the likelihood of contact and of interview in mobile CATI surveys

Despite the acknowledged influence of call patterns on contact and response rates in telephone surveys, this relationship is scarcely investigated in mobile CATI surveys. This paper evaluates the effect of call patterns on the likelihood of making contact and of obtaining an interview in a mobile CATI survey and thus furthers the understanding of the potential of mobile phones as a survey mode. Findings reveal that the likelihood of making contact and of obtaining an interview is not uniform across days of the week or times of the day – Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the worst days to make contact and obtain cooperation; weekends are good for successful callbacks. Additionally, longer time lags between consecutive calls do not favour the likelihood of contact or of interview and it is very difficult to interview mobile phone numbers with a call history with many “voicemail” and “rings but no answer” outcomes

Quality assurance in the Portuguese census: the contribution of the balanced scorecard

This article describes how the balanced scorecard methodology and associated procedures were developed and implemented as the framework for the quality assurance strategy of the fieldwork in the 2011 Portuguese Population and Housing Census. The main goal of a census operation is to provide high-quality statistical information on population, buildings, and dwellings that meet users’ needs. The most critical activity of a census is the fieldwork operation where the distribution, completion, and recollection of census questionnaires are handled. Due to the dimension, complexity, and need to guarantee the final product quality of the census 2011 operation, the balanced scorecard methodology was elected as the framework for the quality assurance strategy implementation. This was the first time such a management system was used in a census operation. In terms of academic research on census quality control, the quality focus has been on the net undercount based on post enumeration survey. On the contrary, the authors’ concern is about how to ensure quality enumeration work during the census operation. The balanced scorecard methodology allowed integrating the operational execution of goals and its control into a single census management tableaux du bord, which allowed the provision of updated information on the ongoing processes and, thus, the ability to make timely corrections for those targets that suffered deviations.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

The 'maximum delay convention' is a theorem

In this thesis we formalise the Maximum Delay Convention of Catastrophe theory. We prove theorems concerning the genericity of the existence and uniqueness of lifts from the control space to the catastrophe manifold (see Chapter 1), according to the convention above mentioned. Our methods of proof involve the application of transversality theory in a new context: that of higher order tangent bundles

Intervenções de enfermagem culturalmente congruentes em imigrantes

Atualmente, a Enfermagem depara-se cada vez mais com desafios numa sociedade globalizada. A migração de pessoas traz uma riqueza cultural aos países que promove nos enfermeiros a necessidade de se capacitarem no sentido de realizarem intervenções de enfermagem culturalmente congruentes. O objetivo do artigo é caraterizar a evidência científica obtida sobre o processo de comunicação nas intervenções de enfermagem com imigrantes em cuidados de saúde primários. Foi utilizada a Revisão Sistemática da Literatura como metodologia para a clarificação do fenómeno em estudo, tendo sido formulada a seguinte questão em formato PICo: Como se caracteriza o processo de comunicação que os enfermeiros estabelecem com imigrantes nas intervenções de enfermagem em cuidados de saúde primários? Procedeu-se à pesquisa nas bases de dados CINAHL Plus; Medline e Medical Latina e na PubMed e Proquest. As evidências apuradas contribuíram para a identificação de uma estratégia facilitadora do processo de comunicação dos enfermeiros com os imigrantes em cuidados de saúde primários: a mobilização de promotores de saúde com a mesma origem cultural das pessoas cuidadas. Conclui-se que a identificação de pessoas que possam ser promotoras de saúde na comunidade imigrante contribui para intervenções culturalmente congruentes.Currently, nursing faces increasingly with the challenges of a globalized society. People migrations brings a cultural richness to the countries that promotes us nurses the need to build capacity in order to perform nursing interventions culturally congruent. The goal of the article is feature scientific evidence obtained on the communication process in nursing interventions with immigrants in primary health care. A systematic literature review as methodology has been done for clarification of the phenomenon under study, then the question was formulated in PICo form: How is the process of communication that nurses perform with immigrants in nursing interventions in primary health care? Research was conducted in the databases CINAHL Plus; MEDLINE and Medical and in PubMed and Proquest. The evidence cleared allowed find as a facilitator of the communication process strategy of nurses with the immigrants in primary health care, the mobilization of health promoters with the same cultural origin of people cared for. It is concluded that the identification of people who might be health promoters in the immigrant community contributes to interventions culturally congruent.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The challenging modelling of kLa in a periodic constricted small-scale tube

An extensive use in chemistry, biological and pharmaceutical laboratories is envisaged for a novel continuous screening reactor based on the oscillatory flow technology (Harvey, 2001). The basic unit of this reactor was recently presented by Harvey et al. (2003) and Reis et al. (2004) and consists in a 4.4 mm internal diameter and 350 mm long jacketed glass small-scale tube provided with smooth periodic constrictions, SPCs (Figure 1). Prediction of fluid mixing and residence time within this tube were successfully achieved with CFDs (Harvey et al. (2003) and Reis et al. (2004)), but modelling of oxygen mass-transfer coefficient forecast as a very challenging task. Physical properties, sparger and column configuration, agitation/oscillation intensity, superficial gas velocity, all affects kLa, controlling the properties of gas-phase: bubble size, bubble velocity/residence time and gas hold-up. In all, the the overall volumetric mass transfer coefficient, kLa can be affected by the mass transfer coefficient, kL or by the interfacial area, a. Previous work with this novel reactor (Reis et al., in Proceedings of 16th CHISA, 2004) demonstrated improved oxygen mass transfer rates. The modelling of kLa requires a good understand of liquid and gas-phase behaviours. The application of oscillatory flow motion to the constricted tube induced significant modification in bubbles trajectories, resulting in complex liquid-bubble mixing pattern, and made breakage and coalescence of bubbles become regular events in each cavity. Those patterns switch with the increase of mixing intensity (either by increasing the oscillation frequency and/or amplitude) in several regimes (Figure 2), in the same way as in conventional oscillatory flow reactors (OFRs): initially, bubbles move upward, but with the increase of oscillation intensity bubbles start to move downwards in certain phases of the oscillation cycle. At intensive levels of oscillation, rising bubbles are trapped within each cell for several seconds thus staying in each cavity longer due to the motion of vortices as compared with a bubble column. It was found that bubble size and hold-up contribute to the measured mass transfer enhancement but is the combination of small bubbles with the tortuous routes for bubbles to travel that promotes enhanced mass transfer. Moreover, the small-scale of the tube associated with the 1.6 mm internal diameter of the constriction walls, makes the Taylor flow of gas bubbles contribution an important variable, requiring (or not) to be considered in kLa modelling. This question is bringing into discussion