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.

Clinical reasoning in experienced nurses.

Abstract: As an essential component of nursing practice, clinical reasoning is used to assimilate information, analyze data, and make decisions regarding patient care. Little is known about the reasoning strategies of experienced nurses who are not yet experts. This qualitative descriptive study explored the cognitive strategies used by experienced nurses as they considered assessment findings of assigned patients. To date, few studies of nurses' clinical reasoning have been conducted in a practice setting during actual patient care. A small group research design was employed using the think-aloud (TA) method with protocol analysis. A total of 15 experienced nurses were asked to "think aloud" about patient assessment findings. Data were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed using the three steps of protocol analysis. The results suggest that experienced nurses used a conceptual language to reason about assessment findings and used heuristics to reason more quickly and efficiently.

Can traditional fault prediction models be used for vulnerability prediction

Abstract: Finding security vulnerabilities requires a different mindset than finding general faults in software—thinking like an attacker. Therefore, security engineers looking to prioritize security inspection and testing efforts may be better served by a prediction model that indicates security vulnerabilities rather than faults. At the same time, faults and vulnerabilities have commonalities that may allow development teams to use traditional fault prediction models and metrics for vulnerability prediction. The goal of our study is to determine whether fault prediction models can be used for vulnerability prediction or if specialized vulnerability prediction models should be developed when both models are built with traditional metrics of complexity, code churn, and fault history. We have performed an empirical study on a widely-used, large open source project, the Mozilla Firefox web browser, where 21% of the source code files have faults and only 3% of the files have vulnerabilities. Both the fault prediction model and the vulnerability prediction model provide similar ability in vulnerability prediction across a wide range of classification thresholds. For example, the fault prediction model provided recall of 83% and precision of 11% at classification threshold 0.6 and the vulnerability prediction model provided recall of 83% and precision of 12% at classification threshold 0.5. Our results suggest that fault prediction models based upon traditional metrics can substitute for specialized vulnerability prediction models. However, both fault prediction and vulnerability prediction models require significant improvement to reduce false positives while providing high recall.

Testing the Self-Efficacy—Performance Linkage of Social—Cognitive Theory

Abstract: Past empirical research examining the relationship of self-efficacy perceptions and performance has had several limitations. Most studies were performed in the laboratory with tasks not directly related to individual work performance. As a consequence, many findings are not generalizable to individual work performance. This study tested the self-efficacy-performance model found in Bandura's social-cognitive theory in a work setting, with a sample of 776 American university employees, and with discriminant function analyses. Respondents indicated that performance with computers significantly predicted perceptions of high and low self-efficacy. Results provide additional support for social-cognitive theory as outlined by Bandura.

Recognition of emotional expression by abused children

Abstract: This study compared 17 abused and 17 matched, nonabused children on their ability to identify six facial expressions of emotions and on teacher ratings of social competency. Abused children were less skilled in decoding facial expressions of emotions and were rated less socially competent than nonabused children. The findings suggest a strategy for studying the development of emotion recognition skills by abused and nonabused children.