5,978 research outputs found
Concept-based Interactive Query Expansion Support Tool (CIQUEST)
This report describes a three-year project (2000-03) undertaken in the Information Studies
Department at The University of Sheffield and funded by Resource, The Council for
Museums, Archives and Libraries. The overall aim of the research was to provide user
support for query formulation and reformulation in searching large-scale textual resources
including those of the World Wide Web. More specifically the objectives were: to investigate
and evaluate methods for the automatic generation and organisation of concepts derived from
retrieved document sets, based on statistical methods for term weighting; and to conduct
user-based evaluations on the understanding, presentation and retrieval effectiveness of
concept structures in selecting candidate terms for interactive query expansion.
The TREC test collection formed the basis for the seven evaluative experiments conducted in
the course of the project. These formed four distinct phases in the project plan. In the first
phase, a series of experiments was conducted to investigate further techniques for concept
derivation and hierarchical organisation and structure. The second phase was concerned with
user-based validation of the concept structures. Results of phases 1 and 2 informed on the
design of the test system and the user interface was developed in phase 3. The final phase
entailed a user-based summative evaluation of the CiQuest system.
The main findings demonstrate that concept hierarchies can effectively be generated from
sets of retrieved documents and displayed to searchers in a meaningful way. The approach
provides the searcher with an overview of the contents of the retrieved documents, which in
turn facilitates the viewing of documents and selection of the most relevant ones. Concept
hierarchies are a good source of terms for query expansion and can improve precision. The
extraction of descriptive phrases as an alternative source of terms was also effective. With
respect to presentation, cascading menus were easy to browse for selecting terms and for
viewing documents. In conclusion the project dissemination programme and future work are
outlined
User requirement elicitation for cross-language information retrieval
Who are the users of a cross-language retrieval system? Under what circumstances do they need to perform such multi-language searches? How will the task and the context
of use affect successful interaction with the system? Answers to these questions were explored in a user study performed as part of the design stages of Clarity, a EU
founded project on cross-language information retrieval. The findings resulted in a rethink of the planned user interface and a consequent expansion of the set of services
offered. This paper reports on the methodology and techniques used for the elicitation of user requirements as well as how these were in turn transformed into new design
solutions
User-centred interface design for cross-language information retrieval
This paper reports on the user-centered design methodology and
techniques used for the elicitation of user requirements and how these requirements informed the first phase of the user interface design for a Cross-Language Information Retrieval System. We describe a set of factors involved in analysis of the data collected and, finally discuss the implications for user interface design based on the findings
Which User Interaction for Cross-Language Information Retrieval? Design Issues and Reflections
A novel and complex form of information access is cross-language information retrieval: searching for texts written in foreign languages based on native language queries. Although the underlying technology for achieving such a search is relatively well understood, the appropriate interface design is not. This paper presents three user evaluations undertaken during the iterative design of Clarity, a cross-language retrieval system for rare languages, and shows how the user interaction design evolved depending on the results of usability tests. The first test was instrumental to identify weaknesses in both functionalities and interface; the second was run to determine if query translation should be shown or not; the final was a global assessment and focussed on user satisfaction criteria. Lessons were learned at every stage of the process leading to a much more informed view of what a cross-language retrieval system should offer to users
Characteristics of Children Attending Asthma Camp in Nevada
The purpose of this study was to assess asthma trigger knowledge of camp attendees and the measure of agreement between physician and parent assessment of the children’s asthma severity. This study is based on cross-sectional data provided by the American Lung Association (ALA) and those children participating in summer asthma camps in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada. Fifty-six children participated in the camp in August of 2008. The study results suggest a significant positive correlation between physician and parent assessment of asthma severity. With increasing asthma severity there was a relative increase in the number of school days missed among attendees. Trigger knowledge was low among 25.9% (n=7) of attendees, 40.7% (n= 11) had moderate trigger knowledge, and only 33% (n= 9) demonstrated adequate trigger knowledge. Asthma camp is an effective venue to improve asthma education among children and provide a clinical assessment of this condition among those that are without a current diagnosis
Is query translation a distinct task from search?
INTRODUCTION
The University of Sheffield participated in iCLEF 2002 using, as a test-bed, the prototype under
development in the Clarity project. Clarity is an EU funded project aimed at developing a system for
cross-language information retrieval for so-called low density languages, those with few translation
resources. Currently translation between English and Finnish is supported; soon Swedish will be added
and in the near future Latvian and Lithuanian.
Clarity is being developed in a user-centred way with user involvement from the beginning. The design
of the first user interface was based on current best practise, particular attention was paid to empirical
evidence for a specific design choice. Six paper-based interface mock-ups representing important
points in the cross-language search task were generated and presented for user assessment as a part of
an extensive user study. The study (reported in Petrelli et al. 2002) was conducted to understand users
and uses of cross-language information retrieval systems. Many different techniques were applied:
contextual enquiry, interviews, questionnaires, informal evaluation of existing cross-language
technology, and participatory design sessions with the interface mock-ups mentioned above. As a
result, a user class profile was sketched and a long list of user requirements was compiled. As a followup,
a redesign session took place and the new system was designed for users whoknow the language(s) they are searching (polyglots);
• search for writing (journalists, translators business analysts);
• have limited searching skills;
• know the topic in advance or will learn/read on it while searching;
• use many languages in the same search session and often swap between them.
New system features were listed as important and the user interface was redesigned. Considering the
result of the study the new interface allowed the user to dynamically change the language setting from
query to query, hid the query translation and showed the retrieved set as ranked list primary.
Despite the fact that this new design was considered to be more effective, a comparison between the
first layout based on the relevant literature and the new one based on the user study was considered an
important research question. In particular, the choice of hiding the query translation was considered an
important design decision, against the common agreement to allow and support the user in controlling
the system actions. Thus the participation of Sheffield in iCLEF was organized around the idea of
checking if the user should validate the query translation before the search is run or instead if the
system should perform the translation and search in a single step without any user’s supervision
Gender Difference in Emotionally Disturbed Children
The purpose of this study was to determine the consequences to emotionally disturbed elementary school girls of being in the minority in self-contained classes for emotionally disturbed children. This study was conducted in MISII (Modified Instructional Service II) classes, primarily for the emotionally disturbed, in the New York City Public Schools. The ratio of boys to girls was 6.5 to 1. A survey was distributed to teachers of such classes with at least one girl attending. Part 1 of the survey consisted of 36 statements on the following topics indicated by the literature as relevant to the situation of girls in such classes: gender ratios, aggression, restrictive environment and interaction. The teachers responded to the statements on a Likert scale.
Part 2 of the study consisted of a description of a typical school day with key words omitted. The teacher completed the description by supplying the word or phrase that best described the experience of the subject girl. Two scenarios were constructed from the responses: (1) the typical day of an aggressive girl, and (2) the typical day of a withdrawn girl. The responses were also tallied by number of girls. The study was based on 34 survey forms. Of the girls described in these forms, 20 were identified as aggressive, 9 as withdrawn, and 5 could not be categorized. The teachers\u27 frequency and percentage of responses indicated distinctive patterns of behavior characteristic of the aggressive subjects and withdrawn subjects. The aggressive girls were seen as responding to frustration with verbal aggression, as having greater management needs than the boys in the class, were disliked by the boys, and their teachers\u27 main concern about them was self control/socialization skills. The withdrawn girls responded to frustration by withdrawing, were seen as having management needs not as great as the boys, were liked by the boys, and their teachers main concern about them was poor academics.
It was concluded that, with the modification of grouping at least three girls together in a class, the self-contained class for the emotionally disturbed can be an appropriate placement for aggressive girls. Such classes do not generally meet the needs of withdrawn girls
High-contrast imaging at small separation: impact of the optical configuration of two deformable mirrors on dark holes
The direct detection and characterization of exoplanets will be a major
scientific driver over the next decade, involving the development of very large
telescopes and requires high-contrast imaging close to the optical axis. Some
complex techniques have been developed to improve the performance at small
separations (coronagraphy, wavefront shaping, etc). In this paper, we study
some of the fundamental limitations of high contrast at the instrument design
level, for cases that use a combination of a coronagraph and two deformable
mirrors for wavefront shaping. In particular, we focus on small-separation
point-source imaging (around 1 /D). First, we analytically or
semi-analytically analysing the impact of several instrument design parameters:
actuator number, deformable mirror locations and optic aberrations (level and
frequency distribution). Second, we develop in-depth Monte Carlo simulation to
compare the performance of dark hole correction using a generic test-bed model
to test the Fresnel propagation of multiple randomly generated optics static
phase errors. We demonstrate that imaging at small separations requires large
setup and small dark hole size. The performance is sensitive to the optic
aberration amount and spatial frequencies distribution but shows a weak
dependence on actuator number or setup architecture when the dark hole is
sufficiently small (from 1 to 5 /D).Comment: 13 pages, 18 figure
Exploring the Nature of Perfectionism and Middle School Student Achievement
The purpose of this dissertation is to describe a doctoral research study designed to explore the nature of perfectionism and middle school student achievement. Perfectionism is currently perceived as a multi-dimensional construct with both adaptive and maladaptive features. This qualitative research study focuses on the views of nine seventh grade participants who were identified as adaptive or maladaptive perfectionists in a survey of students in one seventh grade cohort using the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (Slaney, Mobley, Trippi, Ashby, & Johnson, 1996). Each of the participants met with the researcher and completed three individual interviews and two focus group sessions. Data gathered from those meetings were analyzed to answer the following questions: What are the traits of middle school students who are identified as demostrating adaptive perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism? How do middle school students who are identified as demonstrating adaptive or maladaptive perfectionism view their academic achievement? And, how do middle school students who are identified as demonstrating adaptive or maladaptive perfectionism perceive the impact of parents, teachers and peers on their academic achievement
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