University of Maryland, Baltimore County

About: University of Maryland, Baltimore County is a education organization based out in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Aerosol. The organization has 8749 authors who have published 20843 publications receiving 795706 citations. The organization is also known as: UMBC.

Measuring and Monitoring Technical Debt

Abstract: Technical debt is a metaphor for immature, incomplete, or inadequate artifacts in the software development lifecycle that cause higher costs and lower quality in the long run. These artifacts remaining in a system affect subsequent development and maintenance activities, and so can be seen as a type of debt that the system developers owe the system. Incurring technical debt may speed up software development in the short run, but such benefit is achieved at the cost of extra work in the future, as if paying interest on the debt. In this sense, the technical debt metaphor characterizes the relationship between the short-term benefits of delaying certain software maintenance tasks or doing them quickly and less carefully, and the long-term cost of those delays. However, managing technical debt is more complicated than managing financial debt because of the uncertainty involved. In this chapter, the authors review the main issues associated with technical debt, and propose a technical debt management framework and a research plan for validation. The objective of our research agenda is to develop and validate a comprehensive technical debt theory that formalizes the relationship between the cost and benefit sides of the concept. Further, we propose to use the theory to propose mechanisms (processes and tools) for measuring and managing technical debt in software product maintenance. The theory and management mechanisms are intended ultimately to contribute to the improved quality of software and facilitate decision making in software maintenance.

The Abbreviated Injury Scale and Injury Severity Score. Levels of inter- and intrarater reliability.

Abstract: Given the wide usage and proven value of the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) in rating severity of trauma, it is essential that certain reliability issues concerning its application be resolved. This article describes a study designed to address these reliability issues. Each of 15 raters with varying qualifications was asked to identify AIS code injuries sustained by 375 trauma patients admitted to four Baltimore area hospitals. Results showed that as a group, physicians and nurses tend to be more reliable in their ratings than either emergency medical technicians (EMTs) or nonclinical technicians, although a research assistant who is well trained in AIS coding and is a diligent worker can use the AIS to code severity as reliably as the physicians when sufficient information is provided in the medical chart. Reliability of AIS scoring was somewhat higher for blunt (vehicular and nonvehicular) versus penetrating injuries.

Internal validity of project MATCH treatments: Discriminability and integrity.

Abstract: Project MATCH (Matching Alcoholism Treatments to Client Heterogeneity) is a multisite collaborative project designed to evaluate patient-treatment interactions in alcoholism treatment. To evaluate whether major threats to the internal validity of the independent (treatment) variable in Project MATCH could be ruled out, we investigated several aspects of treatment integrity and discriminability. In this study, 1,726 alcohol-dependent participants at 10 sites were randomized to 3 treatments: cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT), motivational enhancement therapy (MET), and 12-step facilitation (TSF). Participants received treatment either as outpatients or as aftercare following a more intensive inpatient or day hospital treatment. For both the outpatient and aftercare arms of the study, treatments were discriminable in that therapists implemented each of the treatments according to manual guidelines and rarely used techniques associated with comparison approaches. Participants received a high level of exposure to their study treatments, and the intended contrast in treatment dose between MET and the 2 more intensive treatments (CBT and TSF) was obtained. Alcoholics Anonymous involvement was significantly higher for participants assigned to TSF versus MET or CBT, whereas the treatments did not differ in utilization of other nonstudy treatments. Nonspecific aspects of treatment such as therapist skillfulness and level of the therapeutic alliance were comparable across treatment conditions.