Assessment through simulation is something that political science pedagogy has yet to explore in a robust manner. This article advances analysis of social science simulation and assessment by laying out a typology of active-learning activities that isolates and examines their potential for assessment. In short, we argue that there are essentially…

A latent variable modeling approach is outlined that can be used for meta-analysis of reliability coefficients of multicomponent measuring instruments. Important limitations of efforts to combine composite reliability findings across multiple studies are initially pointed out. A reliability synthesis procedure is discussed that is based on…

This dissertation presents a study of an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) navigation and coverage hole patching in coordinate-free and localization-free Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Navigation and coverage maintenance are related problems since coverage hole patching requires effective navigation in the sensor network environment. A…

In educational research, outcome measures are often estimated across separate studies or across schools, districts, or other subgroups to assess the overall causal effect of an active treatment versus a control treatment. Students may be partitioned into such strata or blocks by experimental design, or separated into studies within a…

In this thesis, we consider estimation, coding, and sensor scheduling for energy efficient operation of wireless visual sensor networks (VSN), which consist of battery-powered wireless sensors with sensing (imaging), computation, and communication capabilities. The competing requirements for applications of these wireless sensor networks (WSN)…

Background: The United States Census Bureau stated that there were 76.1 million children aged birth to 17 years in the United States, and 13.9% of these children are estimated to have special health care needs. In California, 9.9% of children have special health care needs. This background information leads to question the pediatric nurse…

Background: There is little evidence that technology acceptance is well understood in healthcare. The hospital environment is complex and dynamic creating a challenge when new technology is introduced because it impacts current processes and workflows which can significantly affect patient care delivery and outcomes. This study tested the effect…

Despite wide applications of both mediation models and missing data techniques, formal discussion of mediation analysis with missing data is still rare. We introduce and compare four approaches to dealing with missing data in mediation analysis including list wise deletion, pairwise deletion, multiple imputation (MI), and a two-stage maximum…

This study aimed to identify if complementing representations of concrete objects with representations of abstract objects improves students' conceptual understanding as they use a simulation to experiment in the domain of "Light and Color". Moreover, we investigated whether students' prior knowledge is a factor that must be considered in deciding…

In a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), the hierarchical complexity of Web Services (WS) and their interactions with the underlying Application Server (AS) create new challenges in providing a realistic estimate of WS performance and reliability. The current approaches often treat the entire WS environment as a black-box. Thus, the sensitivity…

Cross-selling and product bundling are prevalent strategies in the retail sector. Instead of static bundling offers, i.e. giving the same offer to everyone, personalized dynamic cross-selling generates targeted bundle offers and can help maximize revenues and profits. In resolving the two basic problems of dynamic cross-selling, which involves…

Fieldbus networks are all-digital, two-way, multi-drop communication systems that are used to connect field devices such as sensors and actuators, and controllers. These fieldbus network systems are also called networked control systems (NCS). Although, there are different varieties of fieldbus networks such as Foundation Field Bus, DeviceNet, and…

Previous studies have rarely examined the impact of outliers on the decisions about the number of factors to extract in an exploratory factor analysis. The few studies that have investigated this issue have arrived at contradictory conclusions regarding whether outliers inflated or deflated the number of factors extracted. By systematically…

Randomization tests are often recommended when parametric assumptions may be violated because they require no distributional or random sampling assumptions in order to be valid. In addition to being exact, a randomization test may also be more powerful than its parametric counterpart. This was demonstrated in a simulation study which examined the…

The current study presents a series of computational simulations that demonstrate how the neural coding of numerical magnitude may influence number cognition and development. This includes behavioral phenomena cataloged in cognitive literature such as the development of numerical estimation and operational momentum. Though neural research has…