Dublin City University

About: Dublin City University is a education organization based out in Dublin, Ireland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Machine translation. The organization has 5904 authors who have published 17178 publications receiving 389376 citations. The organization is also known as: National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin & DCU.

Using grounded theory to understand software process improvement: A study of Irish software product companies

Abstract: Software process improvement (SPI) aims to understand the software process as it is used within an organisation and thus drive the implementation of changes to that process to achieve specific goals such as increasing development speed, achieving higher product quality or reducing costs. Accordingly, SPI researchers must be equipped with the methodologies and tools to enable them to look within organisations and understand the state of practice with respect to software process and process improvement initiatives, in addition to investigating the relevant literature. Having examined a number of potentially suitable research methodologies, we have chosen Grounded Theory as a suitable approach to determine what was happening in actual practice in relation to software process and SPI, using the indigenous Irish software product industry as a test-bed. The outcome of this study is a theory, grounded in the field data, that explains when and why SPI is undertaken by the software industry. The objective of this paper is to describe both the selection and usage of grounded theory in this study and evaluate its effectiveness as a research methodology for software process researchers. Accordingly, this paper will focus on the selection and usage of grounded theory, rather than results of the SPI study itself.

Social Interaction and Urban Sprawl

Abstract: Various authors, most notably Putnam (2000), have argued that low-density living reduces social capital and thus social interaction, and this argument has been used to buttress criticisms of urban sprawl. If low densities in fact reduce social interaction, then an externality arises, validating Putnam's critique. In choosing their own lot sizes, consumers would fail to consider the loss of interaction benefits for their neighbors when lot size is increased. Lot sizes would then be inefficiently large, and cities excessively spread out. The paper tests the premise of this argument (the existence of a positive link between interaction and density) using data from the Social Capital Benchmark Survey. In the empirical work, social interaction measures for individual survey respondents are regressed on census-tract density and a host of household characteristics, using an instrumental-variable approach to control for the potential endogeneity of density.

A study of accounting students' motives, expectations and preparedness for higher education

Abstract: Framed by the accounting education change debate and growing national concern regarding student attrition, this paper examines the perceptions of first‐year students as they commence their study of accounting at an Irish university. It explores a range of factors which impact on students' learning: their motives for entering higher education, their rationale for selecting an accounting programme, their preparedness for further study and their expectations. The findings offer accounting educators the opportunity to have a greater sensitivity to, and a better understanding of, their students. This will enable better‐informed curriculum, teaching and assessment within the accounting discipline, aiding students' transition to higher education and leading to higher quality learning.

Towards a More Comprehensive Understanding of the Roles of Management Accountants

Abstract: The study was designed to address specific gaps in the literature by identifying a comprehensive set of antecedents and characteristics with respect to the roles of management accountants (MAs) and exploring the consequences of how these roles are discharged. Interviews were conducted with 18 financial managers (FMs) and 18 operating managers (OMs) in medium and large manufacturing firms. Theoretical lenses of management control, contingency and role theory were used in the interpretation of the findings. A comprehensive picture of the antecedents, characteristics and consequences associated with the roles of MAs emerge from the data and the findings suggest that management and the MAs themselves play a critical part in the determination of the roles of MAs. In particular, the findings reveal contingencies and conflicts with regard to the interaction between MAs and OMs including the management control consequences associated with how MAs interact with OMs. For some MAs, the paper argues that role conflict, despite its negative connotations, may facilitate more effective management control. The adoption of a 'business partner' model for MAs is found here to be ambiguous, conditional and uncertain.

Overview of the ShARe/CLEF eHealth Evaluation Lab 2013

Abstract: Discharge summaries and other free-text reports in healthcare transfer information between working shifts and geographic locations. Patients are likely to have difficulties in understanding their content, because of their medical jargon, non-standard abbreviations, and ward-specific idioms. This paper reports on an evaluation lab with an aim to support the continuum of care by developing methods and resources that make clinical reports in English easier to understand for patients, and which helps them in finding information related to their condition. This ShARe/CLEFeHealth2013 lab offered student mentoring and shared tasks: identification and normalisation of disorders 1a and 1b and normalisation of abbreviations and acronyms 2 in clinical reports with respect to terminology standards in healthcare as well as information retrieval 3 to address questions patients may have when reading clinical reports. The focus on patients' information needs as opposed to the specialised information needs of physicians and other healthcare workers was the main feature of the lab distinguishing it from previous shared tasks. De-identified clinical reports for the three tasks were from US intensive care and originated from the MIMIC II database. Other text documents for Task 3 were from the Internet and originated from the Khresmoi project. Task 1 annotations originated from the ShARe annotations. For Tasks 2 and 3, new annotations, queries, and relevance assessments were created. 64, 56, and 55 people registered their interest in Tasks 1, 2, and 3, respectively. 34 unique teams 3 members per team on average participated with 22, 17, 5, and 9 teams in Tasks 1a, 1b, 2 and 3, respectively. The teams were from Australia, China, France, India, Ireland, Republic of Korea, Spain, UK, and USA. Some teams developed and used additional annotations, but this strategy contributed to the system performance only in Task 2. The best systems had the F1 score of 0.75 in Task 1a; Accuracies of 0.59 and 0.72 in Tasks 1b and 2; and Precision at 10 of 0.52 in Task 3. The results demonstrate the substantial community interest and capabilities of these systems in making clinical reports easier to understand for patients. The organisers have made data and tools available for future research and development.