Methodik und Ergebnisse einer Experimentreihe über Entwurfsmuster

Software-Entwurfsmuster sind eine intuitiv einleuchtende Idee, die viele Befürworter hat. Als Forscher dürfen wir die behaupteten Wirkungen von Entwurfsmustern jedoch nicht einfach glauben, sondern müssen sie gründlich prüfen. Dieser Artikel beschreibt die wichtigsten Behauptungen und entwickelt daraus zugeh?rige Forschungsfragen. Wir diskutieren die Methodik für ein Forschungsprogramm, das die Fragen beantworten soll, und skizzieren praktische Beschr?nkungen, unter denen diese Forschung ablaufen mu?. Es folgt eine kurze Beschreibung von drei kontrollierten Experimenten und den Hauptfolgerungen aus ihren Ergebnissen. So sollte man zum Beispiel die Benutzung von Entwurfsmustern in einem Entwurf genau dokumentieren und Entwurfsmuster nicht einsetzen, ohne alternative Entwürfe zu prüfen. Abschlie?end diskutieren wir ein im Rahmen des Forschungsprogramms geplantes viertes Experiment. Der Beitrag dieses Artikels liegt vorrangig in einer Beschreibung und Diskussion wichtiger methodischer Aspekte kontrollierter Experimente in der Softwaretechnik.     

Bewegungsberatung durch Experten aus der Sportwissenschaft. Eine Public Health Strategie zur Erhöhung körperlicher Aktivität bei speziellen Zielgruppen

Although sports clubs, associations and health insurance companies offer a wide range of exercise programs, several target groups, such as groups with low socioeconomic status struggle to overcome barriers for participation. The aim of this paper is to show the need for, as well as the prospects of structured physical activity counselling for specific target groups provided by exercise specialists. This successful approach to promote physical activity is described detailed in the group of long-term unemployed persons over 50 years in a job centre setting. A close cooperation with established local exercise programs is intended. Deficits and requirements of physical activity counselling in primary health care settings are adopted and transferred into the theory-based public health strategy. This approach has the potential to create a new field of work for exercise and health professionals in the field of primary prevention.     

Which are the best performing regions in information science in terms of highly cited papers? Some improvements of our previous mapping approaches

Bornmann and Leydesdorff (2011) proposed methods based on Web of Science data to identify field-specific excellence in cities where highly cited papers were published more frequently than can be expected. Top performers in output are cities in which authors are located who publish a number of highly cited papers that is statistically significantly higher than can be expected for these cities. Using papers published between 1989 and 2009 in information science improvements to the methods of Bornmann and Leydesdorff (2011) are presented and an alternative mapping approach based on the Integrated Impact Indicator (I3) is introduced here. The I3 indicator was developed by Leydesdorff and Bornmann (2011b).     

Cross-lagged relationships among leisure-time exercise and perceived stress in blue-collar workers

Blue-collar workers (N = 203) from a large food-processing plant in the southwestern U.S. completed measures of perceived stress and leisure-time exercise at an initial test session in addition to a 2-month follow-up session. Mean age of the sample participants equaled 43.61 (SD = 9.79), and 69.5% of the sample were male, 71.4% were Caucasian, and 74.9% were married/cohabitating. Structural equation modeling was employed to examine the cross-lagged relationships between perceived stress and leisure-time exercise at these time points, controlling for gender, marital status, age, and yearly household income. Results indicated that a model with a path from perceptions of Time 1 stress to Time 2 exercise frequency was most parsimonious and provided acceptable model fit, suggesting that perceptions of stress are related to reductions in exercise participation in this population. However, there was little support for a relationship between Time 1 exercise participation and Time 2 perceived stress.     

The problem of citation impact assessments for recent publication years in institutional evaluations

Bibliometrics has become an indispensable tool in the evaluation of institutions (in the natural and life sciences). An evaluation report without bibliometric data has become a rarity. However, evaluations are often required to measure the citation impact of publications in very recent years in particular. As a citation analysis is only meaningful for publications for which a citation window of at least three years is guaranteed, very recent years cannot (should not) be included in the analysis. This study presents various options for dealing with this problem in statistical analysis. The publications from two universities from 2000 to 2011 are used as a sample dataset (n = 2652, univ 1 = 1484 and univ 2 = 1168). One option is to show the citation impact data (percentiles) in a graphic and to use a line for percentiles regressed on ‘distant’ publication years (with confidence interval) showing the trend for the ‘very recent’ publication years. Another way of dealing with the problem is to work with the concept of samples and populations. The third option (very related to the second) is the application of the counterfactual concept of causality.     

The validation of (advanced) bibliometric indicators through peer assessments: A comparative study using data from InCites and F1000

The data of F1000 and InCites provide us with the unique opportunity to investigate the relationship between peers’ ratings and bibliometric metrics on a broad and comprehensive data set with high-quality ratings. F1000 is a post-publication peer review system of the biomedical literature. The comparison of metrics with peer evaluation has been widely acknowledged as a way of validating metrics. Based on the seven indicators offered by InCites, we analyzed the validity of raw citation counts (Times Cited, 2nd Generation Citations, and 2nd Generation Citations per Citing Document), normalized indicators (Journal Actual/Expected Citations, Category Actual/Expected Citations, and Percentile in Subject Area), and a journal based indicator (Journal Impact Factor). The data set consists of 125 papers published in 2008 and belonging to the subject category cell biology or immunology. As the results show, Percentile in Subject Area achieves the highest correlation with F1000 ratings; we can assert that for further three other indicators (Times Cited, 2nd Generation Citations, and Category Actual/Expected Citations) the “true” correlation with the ratings reaches at least a medium effect size.