DePaul University

About: DePaul University is a education organization based out in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 5658 authors who have published 11562 publications receiving 295257 citations.

The Detection and Classification of Non-Functional Requirements with Application to Early Aspects

Abstract: This paper introduces an information retrieval based approach for automating the detection and classification of non-functional requirements (NFRs). Early detection of NFRs is useful because it enables system level constraints to be considered and incorporated into early architectural designs as opposed to being refactored in at a later time. Candidate NFRs can be detected in both structured and unstructured documents, including requirements specifications that contain scattered and non-categorized NFRs, and freeform documents such as meeting minutes, interview notes, and memos containing stakeholder comments documenting their NFR related needs. This paper describes the classification algorithm and then evaluates its effectiveness in an experiment based on fifteen requirements specifications developed as term projects by MS students at DePaul University. An additional case study is also described in which the approach is used to classifying NFRs from a large free form requirements document obtained from Siemens Logistics and Automotive Organization.

Emergent Leadership Behaviors: The Function of Personality and Cognitive Ability in Determining Teamwork Performance and KSAs

Abstract: This study investigated the theoretical underpinnings of individual differences in emergent leadership behaviors and their relationships to teamwork processes and outcomes. Both personality and cognitive ability were utilized to examine behaviors of leadership emergence, team performance, and KSAs. Three hundred and twenty undergraduate psychology students completed personality and cognitive ability tests and then formed sixty-seven mixed-gender teams. Members rated each other on emergent leadership behaviors as well as their team on specific interpersonal and self-management KSAs. Results revealed that extroversion, openness to experience and cognitive ability were predictive of emergent leadership behaviors. Conscientiousness and cognitive ability were associated with team performance. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.

Understanding and Preventing Violence Directed against Teachers: Recommendations for a National Research, Practice, and Policy Agenda.

Abstract: Violence directed against K-12 teachers is a serious problem that demands the immediate attention of researchers, providers of teacher pre-service and in-service training, school administrators, community leaders, and policymakers. Surprisingly, little research has been conducted on this growing problem despite the broad impact teacher victimization can have on schooling, recruitment, and retention of highly effective teachers and on student academic and behavioral outcomes. Psychologists should play a leadership role in mitigating school violence, including violence directed toward teachers. There is a need for psychologists to conduct research accurately assessing the types and scope of violence that teachers experience; to comprehensively evaluate the individual, classroom, school, community, institutional, and cultural contextual factors that might predict and/or explain types of teacher violence; and to examine the effectiveness and sustainability of classroom, school, and district-wide prevention and intervention strategies that target teacher violence in school systems. Collectively, the work of psychologists in this area could have a substantial impact on schooling, teacher experience and retention, and overall student performance.

Communication in emergency medicine: Implications for patient safety

Abstract: Emergency medicine is largely a communicative activity, and medical mishaps that occur in this context are too often the result of vulnerable communication processes. In this year-long qualitative study of two academic emergency departments, an interdisciplinary research team identified four such processes: triage, testing and evaluation, handoffs, and admitting. In each case, we found that narrative rationality (the patient's story) was consistently subjugated to technical rationality (actionable lists). Process changes are proposed to encourage caregivers to either reconsider their course of action or request additional contextual information. A heightened awareness of the bias for technical over narrative rationality and a better recognition of uncertainty in emergency medicine communication are important first steps toward anticipating potential failures and ensuring patient safety.

A machine learning approach for tracing regulatory codes to product specific requirements

Abstract: Regulatory standards, designed to protect the safety, security, and privacy of the public, govern numerous areas of software intensive systems. Project personnel must therefore demonstrate that an as-built system meets all relevant regulatory codes. Current methods for demonstrating compliance rely either on after-the-fact audits, which can lead to significant refactoring when regulations are not met, or else require analysts to construct and use traceability matrices to demonstrate compliance. Manual tracing can be prohibitively time-consuming; however automated trace retrieval methods are not very effective due to the vocabulary mismatches that often occur between regulatory codes and product level requirements. This paper introduces and evaluates two machine-learning methods, designed to improve the quality of traces generated between regulatory codes and product level requirements. The first approach uses manually created traceability matrices to train a trace classifier, while the second approach uses web-mining techniques to reconstruct the original trace query. The techniques were evaluated against security regulations from the USA government's Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPAA) traced against ten healthcare related requirements specifications. Results demonstrated improvements for the subset of HIPAA regulations that exhibited high fan-out behavior across the requirements datasets.