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849 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2019

Improving the measurement of school climate using item response theory

Sarah Lindstrom Johnson, Ray E. Reichenberg, Kathan Shukla, Tracy E. Waasdorp, and Catherine P. Bradshaw

Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice

The U.S. government has become increasingly focused on school climate, as recently evidenced by its inclusion as an accountability indicator in the Every Student Succeeds Act. Yet, there remains considerable variability in both conceptualizing and measuring school climate. To better inform the research and practice related to school climate and its measurement, we leveraged item response theory (IRT), a commonly used psychometric approach for the design of achievement assessments, to create a parsimonious measure of school climate that operates across varying individual characteristics. Students (n = 69,513) in 111 secondary schools completed a school climate assessment focused on three domains of climate (i.e., safety, engagement, and environment), as defined by the U.S. Department of Education. Item and test characteristics were estimated using the mirt package in R using unidimensional IRT. Analyses revealed measurement difficulties that resulted in a greater ability to assess less favorable perspectives on school climate. Differential item functioning analyses indicated measurement differences based on student academic success. These findings support the development of a broad measure of school climate but also highlight the importance of work to ensure precision in measuring school climate, particularly when considering use as an accountability measure.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Medical negligence and law application of the Bolam and Bolitho rules in India

M P Ram Mohan and Vishakha Raj

Economic and Political Weekly

India has adopted the Bolam rule from the United Kingdom and has been using it to adjudicate cases of medical negligence. The evolution of the Bolam rule in the UK as well as the way the rule is applied in India by the Supreme Court reflects a balance between judicial intervention and deference to medical expertise. Although it is settled that it is the courts and not medical experts who must finally decide on whether the conduct of a doctor is negligent, the standards to be used when evaluating expert evidence and the extent to which such cases must be deferred to are evolving. The Supreme Court has not clearly stated the judicial standard against which it will test these differing opinions of medical experts and has not been consistent in its willingness to do so. Therefore, the application of the Bolam rule in India has been inconsistent and this is likely to have an impact on the decisions made by medical practitioners.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Nuclear energy safety, regulatory independence, and judicial deference: The case of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board of India

M P Ram Mohan, K V Gopakumar, and Tyson Smith

Administration & Society

Research examining regulatory independence has either suggested de jure independence to be a predictor of de facto independence or suggested that the presence of de jure may not always indicate de facto independence. We study the Indian Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) to emphasize how AERB has enjoyed de facto independence, even in the absence of de jure independence. Using “judicial deference” principle, and through a mapping of substantive court cases, the article demonstrates Indian judiciary has consistently applied deference to AERB’s decision-making process, thereby showing confidence in the nuclear regulatory regime sustained as its inception.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Attitudinal choice models with applications in human decision making

Manish Aggarwal

International Journal of Intelligent Systems

A new family of attitudinal discrete choice models is proposed by considering the attitudinal character and the weight vector, both of which are specific to a decision maker (DM). Given the attribute values of different alternatives, the proposed models give varying choice probabilities, as per the DM's-specific attitudinal character and the weight vector. It is also shown that the conventional discrete choice models are the special cases of the proposed attitudinal models. The proposed choice models are also generalized through an additional parameter to add to their capabilities. An application on real data is included to demonstrate their usefulness in the real world.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Bridging the gap between probabilistic and fuzzy entropy

Manish Aggarwal

IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems

The real world decision-making often involves a comparison of uncertain systems, or alternatives based on fuzzy evaluations. The concept of fuzzy entropy is quite useful in such situations. This paper critically examines the existing fuzzy entropy functions, and redefine them to add to their usefulness as measures of the fuzzy uncertainty in decision-making applications. More specifically, new variants of the extant Luca & Termini, and Pal & Pal fuzzy entropy functions are proposed. The proposed fuzzy entropy functions are extended for the probabilistic-fuzzy uncertainty, commonly observed in the real world. A real application is included to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed entropy functions in decision-making applications.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Extended hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set with fuzzy confidence for solving group decision-making problems

R Krishankumar, K S Ravichandran, Manish Aggarwal, and Sanjay K Tyagi

Neural Computing and Applications

This paper presents a new extension of the hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (HFLTS) called intuitionistic fuzzy confidence-based HFLTS that associates an intuitionistic fuzzy value (IFV) with each linguistic term. The resulting term set is termed as intuitionistic fuzzy confidence hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (IFCHFLTS). The previous studies on the linguistic decision making have emphasized little upon the preference and non-preference for each of the linguistic terms. This information, however, is crucial in multi-criteria decision making under uncertainty. In this regard, we find IFV particularly useful for qualifying each of the linguistic terms with the agent’s degree of preference, non-preference, and hesitation values. Besides, a new aggregation operator named intuitionistic fuzzy confidence linguistic simple weighted geometry (IFCLSWG) is also proposed to fuse decision makers’ linguistic preferences. Further, the criteria weights are estimated using a new method called intuitionistic fuzzy confidence linguistic standard variance. An approach is also suggested for ranking the given alternatives by adapting VIKOR under the proposed IFCHFLTS context. Finally, the practicality and usefulness of the proposal are demonstrated through two real-world problems in green supplier selection for manufacturing industry, and medical diagnosis. The strengths and weaknesses of the proposal are also highlighted by drawing upon a comparison with similar methods.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Logit Choice Models for Interactive Attributes

Manish Aggarwal

Information Sciences

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Journal Articles | 2019

Modeling a decision-maker's choice behavior through perceived values

Manish Aggarwal

IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems

In the real world, an attribute value is perceived differently by different individuals. Emphasizing on this aspect, we extend the discrete choice models with perceived values that are subjective and specific to a decision-maker (DM). The proposed choice models are augmented with the parameters of an entropy function, besides the utility coefficients, to model a DM's complex choice behavior. A variety of higher order choice models are also proposed. The proposed models are further extended with a DM's reference-value for each attribute. A real and illustrative application is included.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Modelling human decision behaviour with preference learning

Manish Aggarwal and Ali Fallah Tehrani

INFORMS Journal on Computing

In the real world, an attribute value is perceived differently by different individuals. Emphasizing on this aspect, we extend the discrete choice models with perceived values that are subjective and specific to a decision-maker (DM). The proposed choice models are augmented with the parameters of an entropy function, besides the utility coefficients, to model a DM's complex choice behavior. A variety of higher order choice models are also proposed. The proposed models are further extended with a DM's reference-value for each attribute. A real and illustrative application is included.

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Journal Articles | 2019

A new family of fuzzy discrete choice models

Manish Aggarwal

IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems

Often in real-world decision making, it is difficult to crisply evaluate the utility values as required in the case of conventional choice models. Besides, a decision maker (DM) has his/her own relative importance for each of the attributes. The attributes may also be interacting positively (synergy) or negatively, the degree of which is specific to the DM. A new family of discrete choice models is introduced with a motivation that takes into account the human factors in real-world multiattribute decision making. More specifically, the proposed choice models are based on fuzzy subjective utilities that are easier to elicit. The proposed models are further extended to take into account the unique attitudinal character of the DM, the relative weight vector, and the degree of interaction among the different attributes. A real case study illustrates the usefulness of the study.

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