Browsing by Subject "Measurement"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14
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    Bisphenol A, Diet and Obesity: Exposure Measurement and the Relationship Between Diet and Bisphenol A
    (2014-01) Oppeneer, Sarah
    Diet is considered the primary source of BPA exposure, due to the use of BPA in polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins used in food packaging. Existing human research has major limitations and the cost of serum and urinary BPA assay remains a challenge in evaluating BPA exposure and chronic disease outcomes. Despite the fact that diet is a vehicle for BPA exposure, few studies have considered whether dietary composition alters the toxicokinetics of BPA. Epidemiological studies have also not addressed diet as a potential confounder or effect modifier even though diet is associated with both disease risk and BPA exposure. The Urinary Biomarkers of Dietary Intake (UB-Diet Study) was developed to evaluate the feasibility of using questions that target intake of known dietary sources of BPA to estimate BPA exposure. Predicted BPA exposure levels from the BPA exposure assessment module (BEAM) were compared to multiple spot urine samples. Food records were also collected on the days that urine samples were collected to further evaluate the relationship between diet and urinary BPA levels. Reported macronutrient and food group servings were compared to urinary BPA levels. The BEAM data was not able to accurately predict participants' urinary BPA levels. Recent canned food intake was associated with urinary BPA levels, but only explained approximately one-fifth of the variability in urinary BPA levels and several participants who reported consuming no canned foods had high urinary BPA levels. The study findings suggest that BPA levels may be positively associated with higher caloric and fiber intake, and intakes of vegetables, refined grains and red meats, and inversely associated with total fat intake. More research is needed to characterize sources of BPA exposure, to evaluate the role of diet in the toxicokinetics of BPA and to determine if chronic low level BPA exposure poses any health risk.
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    Developing a measurement matrix for lean product design
    (2015-06) Sabzivand, Amin
    Today, many companies are familiar with the concepts of lean enterprise management and have applied the lean philosophy to their product design process. To study the impact of such practices, measurements need to be developed to evaluate the leanness of a company's product design. Overwhelming amount of literature on lean management and its application to new product development exist. However, most of them focus on the overall strategies and no consensus definition of lean product design exists, not to mention a measurement matrix for lean product design practices. In this thesis, a lean product design measurement matrix is developed based on a comprehensive review of literature in lean product designs. Factors that can be used to assess a company's lean product design practices are identified. The lean product design matrix developed in this study will help companies to measure and evaluate their lean product design process and therefore, focus on key elements needing improvement. It will also facilitate researches that study the impact of lean product design practices on a company's performance overall and in specific areas.
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    Development of an Inclusive Measure of Gender-Based Public Harassment
    (2024) Huber, Kayla
    Gender-based public harassment (GBPH) encompasses a wide variety of behaviors that are enacted by strangers in public places and are likely motivated by targets’ perceived gender, sexual orientation, and/or gender expression. Such behaviors range from whistles, stares, and appearance-related comments to touching, following, and genital exposure. Measures currently used to assess GBPH are limited, as they disproportionately reflect the forms of harassment experienced by straight White cisgender women (mirroring early conceptualizations of the construct as an exclusively man-to-woman phenomenon). The limited scope of current measures is significant, given evidence that rates of GBPH are higher among those who are transgender/nonbinary (TNB), gender nonconforming (GNC), queer, and/or people of color (POC). Thus, the purpose of this study was to develop a measure of GBPH that was inclusive of the harassment experiences of those who are TNB/GNC, queer, and/or POC and to assess the reliability and validity of scores on the measure within large, diverse samples of US adults. Analyses of data from a scoping review process as well as five samples of participants (N = 1,511 total) produced a 31-item, two-factor measure—the Gender-Based Public Harassment Checklist (GBPH-C)—that assessed both sexist and cisheterosexist forms of harassment. Scores on the full GBPH-C (Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 [KR] = .93) as well as its two subscales (KRs = .86, .92) exhibited a high degree of internal consistency. Temporal response consistency was high at the item level, with an average of 85.0% of participants providing a consistent response to each item of the GBPH-C one week later. Additionally, evidence was found for the GBPH-C’s content, construct, and criterion validity, as indicated by favorable ratings from expert judges and members of the target population, differential item endorsement across particular demographic groups, and correlations of hypothesized strength between scores on the GBPH-C and scores on measures of relevant constructs (i.e., personality, nonspecific psychological distress, hypervigilance, and stranger harassment). Using the GBPH-C, the lifetime prevalence of GBPH was alarmingly high overall (87.5%) and rates were elevated among marginalized groups. Potential uses of the GBPH-C are discussed, including clinical assessment of minority stress and estimation of the prevalence/incidence of GBPH at the national level.
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    Development of the adolescent exploratory and risk behavior rating scale.
    (2009-07) Skaar, Nicole Renee
    Adolescence is a time when risk behaviors begin to increase through experimentation with health risk behaviors such as substance used and reckless driving and exploratory risk behaviors such as asking someone on a date and standing up to peers. It is likely that some risk-taking is necessary in the course of social and academic development throughout childhood and adolescence. A shift in the adolescent risk behavior research from a focus on health related behaviors to physical and psychological well-being with a link to educational attainment has gained strength, but the goals of this movement are incomplete. Research is needed to better understand the positive outcomes of health risk and exploratory risk behaviors, and a measure that includes both exploratory risk behavior and health risk behavior is needed. The Adolescent Exploratory and Risk Behavior Rating Scale (AERRS) was developed to address this need. The AERRS was developed using both classical test theory and item response theory methods. The participants were 682 high school students in the Midwest. The results suggest that the developed measure has adequate reliability. The initial examination of validity resulted in a factor structure in which health risk behaviors and exploratory risk behaviors fall into separate factors with some gender differences noted. The item response theory results suggest that risk behavior is a spectrum of behaviors with exploratory behaviors falling on one end and health risk behavior on the opposite end of the spectrum. It was concluded that the AERRS is a reliable measure that has the potential to become a key assessment that has many potential uses in both academic research and applied settings, such as schools.
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    Educational Expectations in an Urban American Indian Community: A Phenomenological Investigation
    (2017-05) Vertigan Swerdfiger, Jacqueline
    Educational Expectations in an Urban American Indian Community: A Phenomenological Investigation. This investigation uses narrative to explore the educational experiences and expectations of 10 urban, Midwestern United States American Indians. Results include insights into community-based evaluation, suggest an emerging field of Indigenous Educational Evaluation, and offers a model and suggestions that may help guide future evaluations of educational programs serving American Indian students.
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    Essays in International Economics and Macroeconomics
    (2017-08) Ayres Queiroz da Silva, Joao Luiz
    The three chapters of this dissertation investigate major puzzles in international economics and macroeconomics. Chapter 1 proposes a new measure of knowledge production within corporations and analyzes how the production and flow of knowledge within multinational cor- porations can account for the cross-country correlation in corporate sector GDP fluctuations. Chapter 2 studies how fluctuations in the price of primary commodities can account for fluctua- tions in bilateral real exchange rates between the United States and United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. Finally, Chapter 3 studies the role of firm entry in accounting for the slow recovery in employment following the World Economic Crisis in 2008–2009.
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    Framework for Measuring Sustainable Regional Development for the Twin Cities Region
    (Center for Transportation Studies, 2010-01) Kirk, Kaydee; Tableporter, Jody; Senn, Andrew; Day, Jennifer; Cao, Jason; Fan, Yingling; Schively Slotterback, Carissa; Goetz, Edward; McGinnis, Laurie
    Patterns of growth and development impact our environmental, social, economic, and cultural quality of life. In order to take steps toward sustainable development that will have a positive impact on these effects, this project, sponsored by the McKnight Foundation, identified a framework for an indicator system to measure sustainable regional development in the Twin Cities metropolitan region. The proposed framework includes a set of sustainability principles, indicators, measures, and accompanying data sources. It is anticipated that the McKnight Foundation will use this sustainability framework for internal organizational purposes with the possibility of the system being considered by other local geographies in the future. This framework could also serve as a tool to compare sustainability between the Twin Cities seven-county region and other comparable regions. The report provides a summary of the research, presents a final recommended set of performance measures for the indicators, makes recommendations for the selection of tier 1 and tier 2 indicators, and recommends a plan for next steps.
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    Measuring Change: Evaluating Impact for Sustainable Programs
    (2015-04) Wilson, Natalie
    This academic paper addresses the necessity and complexity of program evaluation, utilizing the comprehensive evaluation of the Illusion Theater’s “Keepin It Real” Program as a case study. I demonstrate how the “Keepin It Real” Program is pertinent to the conversation about the necessity of evaluation tools, and the results they can produce. The increase in demand for results-driven reporting has served as a catalyst to field-wide thinking about alternative ways to measure and report impact as a method for sustaining and improving programmatic activity.
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    A Restricted Bi-factor Model of Subdomain Relative Strengths and Weaknesses
    (2015-08) CHANG, YU-FENG
    There are increasing demands to report subscores in educational and psychological assessments. Subscores provide unique information about examinees (Sinharay, Puhan & Haberman, 2011). However, there has been much debate about reporting subscores because subscores require meeting certain standards and psychometric qualities as a prerequisite to reporting them. Because there is an increasing need for improving the methods of estimating subscores, multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) is one of the methods to estimate subscores. One MIRT model is the item bi-factor model, which includes a general dimension on which all items load and specific dimensions corresponding to the subdomains from which the items come (Holzinger & Swineford’s, 1937; Gibbons & Hedeker, 1992). However, there is a challenge to interpreting the specific dimension scores in the item bi-factor model while the general dimension score is readily interpreted. The specific dimension scores are residuals from the general factor and residuals can be difficult to interpret. To solve this issue, a restricted bi-factor model was proposed in this paper. This paper contains a real data study and a simulation study to evaluate this model. The results of two studies, interpretation of the model, and practical application of the model were discussed.
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    Sensor Integration Software
    (2014-07-23) Murch, Austin
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    Sensory Features in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of Measurement Quality and Empirical Investigation of Sensory Responsivity in Children at High and Low Familial Risk for Autism
    (2021-12) Gunderson, Jaclyn
    Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder with heterogenous presentation and varying outcomes for children impacted by the condition. The etiology and bio-mechanisms of autism are not well understood. For decades research has focused on the social, communication, and cognitive symptoms associated with ASD. However, sensory symptoms were added to the diagnostic criteria for ASD in 2013 and continue to gain research attention. Historically, sensory symptoms were thought to emerge as secondary consequences of social-cognitive deficits. However, recent empirical work suggests that sensory symptoms manifest early in development and may contribute to the heterogeneity of ASD. For this dissertation, I systematically reviewed the literature to appraise the quality of proxy report sensory measurement tools used to assess sensory features in ASD. Furthermore, in a sample of children with a high and low familial likelihood for developing ASD, I characterized sensory responsivity in social and non-social contexts early in life and investigated the development of sensory responsivity throughout childhood with considerations for variables that may relate to developmental changes and their association with later adaptive behavior. Results from the current studies indicate that proxy report sensory questionnaires attempt to quantify sensory features in ASD via vastly different dimensions with little attention given to either construct or structural validity. Moreover, results show that sensory responsivity behaviors emerged across social and non-social contextual domains early in life and relate to restricted and repetitive behavior and adaptive behavior later in toddlerhood. Compared to children without ASD, children with ASD tend to demonstrate more early sensory responsivity behaviors that increase in a curvilinear relation to chronological age with specific trajectory differences across responsivity behavior patterns (hyperresponsivity, hyporesponsivity, sensory seeking). Additionally, heightened hyporesponsivity in the first year of life predicts lower adaptive behavior later in childhood. Specifically, results suggest that sensory features emerge prior to the consolidation of broad ASD symptoms and relate to adaptive outcomes. However, construct dimensions including the un-agreed upon multidimensionality of sensory features has important implications for future understanding and clinical practice.
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    Traffic Flow and Road User Impacts of the Collapse of the I- 35W Bridge over the Mississippi River
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, Research Services Section, 2010-07) Zhu, Shanjiang; Levinson, David; Liu, Henry; Harder, Kathleen; Dancyzk, Adam
    Major network disruptions have significant impacts on local travelers. A good understanding of behavioral reactions to such incidents is crucial for traffic mitigation, management, and planning. Existing research on such topics is limited. The collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge (August 1, 2007) abruptly disrupted habitual routes of about 14,000 daily trips and forced even more travelers to adapt their travel pattern to evolving network conditions. The opening of the replacement bridge on November 18, 2008 generated another disturbance (this time predictable) on the network. Such “natural” experiments provide unique opportunities for behavioral studies. This study focuses on the traffic and behavioral reactions to both bridge collapse and bridge reopening and contributes to general knowledge by identifying unique patterns following different events. Three types of data collection efforts have been conducted during the appropriate frame of reference (i.e. before vs. after bridge reconstruction): 1) GPS tracking data and associated user surveys, 2) paper and internet-based survey data gauging travel behavior in the post-bridge reconstruction phase, and 3) aggregate data relating to freeway and arterial traffic flows, traffic control, and transit ridership. Differences in reactions to planned versus unplanned events were revealed. Changes in travel cost were evaluated and their temporal and spatial patterns were analyzed. This report concludes with thorough discussions of findings from this study and policy implications.
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    The world assumptions questionnaire: development of a measure of the assumptive world.
    (2009-08) Kaler, Matthew Eric
    Assumptive World Theory (Janoff-Bulman, 1992) proposes that traumatic events are psychologically distressing because they shatter some of survivors' fundamental assumptions about the world. This idea has been regarded as a truism in the trauma literature, although tests of the theory have provided mixed results. More recently, reviews of the most commonly used measure of the assumptive world, the World Assumptions Scale (Janoff-Bulman, 1989), have revealed flaws in its psychometric properties. Thus, the current study aims to develop a new measure of the assumptive world, the World Assumptions Questionnaire. Qualitative survey and interview data were collected from trauma survivors, undergraduates, trauma researchers, and clinicians treating trauma survivors to generate content domains and items. An initial quantitative survey study of 236 undergraduates was used to evaluate the underlying factor structure of the item pool and select items for the final scale. A second quantitative, repeat-administration, survey study of 312 undergraduates yielded findings that the World Assumptions Questionnaire had strong psychometric properties including satisfactory temporal stability, a stable factor structure reflective of the proposed measurement model, satisfactory internal consistency reliability, and more evidence of content and construct validity. Results from these studies are presented and implications for further research are discussed.