Browsing by Subject "error"

Substantial research has been conducted on recruitment processes within companies, as personnel are such an important component of a company's success. Prior research shows that the recruitment process isn't conducted in a reliable and objective way. Since recruiters trust their intuition throughout the recruitment process, they are in danger of making unfair and biased decisions. Recruiters are therefore being critiqued for not managing the process as recommended, in regards to the objective and fair treatment of all applicants. Yet there is scarce qualitative research that examines the recruitment process from the recruiters' point of view. Thus the aim of this study is to understand what recruiters perceive as challenging within the role, how they approach the requirement to be objective in relation to whether true objectivity is indeed realistic, and what role they give intuition in the recruitment process. This study aims to understand recruitment from the recruiters' perspective in order to gain a better understanding of the issues involved. The research data was gathered in interviews with 16 recruiters from 9 different recruitment consultancy agencies in Helsinki and Tampere, Finland. The interviews were grouped in to themes that addressed challenges, decision-making and intuition. The transcribed interviews were analyzed inductively from a hermeneutic phenomenological scientific standpoint. The study shows that recruiters don't regard the recruitment process as objective. Because the process is partly social, it inherently makes room for subjective interpretation. Also, recruiters believe that the information accumulated from social interaction brings added value to the recruitment process. Hence the study shows that intuition has great significance in the recruitment process, as the majority of recruiters use it regularly. Prior research on intuition shows that it can be a source of wisdom and expertise, if used correctly. The recruiters tried to carry out the recruitment process in an as objective and transparent manner as possible. By reflecting, questioning and critically reviewing their own thoughts, opinions and feelings, they aimed to avoid making decisions and judgments based on feelings. Taking the recruiters' point of view in to account gives new insight in to the recruitment process and the issues therein.

Substantial research has been conducted on recruitment processes within companies, as personnel are such an important component of a company's success. Prior research shows that the recruitment process isn't conducted in a reliable and objective way. Since recruiters trust their intuition throughout the recruitment process, they are in danger of making unfair and biased decisions. Recruiters are therefore being critiqued for not managing the process as recommended, in regards to the objective and fair treatment of all applicants. Yet there is scarce qualitative research that examines the recruitment process from the recruiters' point of view. Thus the aim of this study is to understand what recruiters perceive as challenging within the role, how they approach the requirement to be objective in relation to whether true objectivity is indeed realistic, and what role they give intuition in the recruitment process. This study aims to understand recruitment from the recruiters' perspective in order to gain a better understanding of the issues involved. The research data was gathered in interviews with 16 recruiters from 9 different recruitment consultancy agencies in Helsinki and Tampere, Finland. The interviews were grouped in to themes that addressed challenges, decision-making and intuition. The transcribed interviews were analyzed inductively from a hermeneutic phenomenological scientific standpoint. The study shows that recruiters don't regard the recruitment process as objective. Because the process is partly social, it inherently makes room for subjective interpretation. Also, recruiters believe that the information accumulated from social interaction brings added value to the recruitment process. Hence the study shows that intuition has great significance in the recruitment process, as the majority of recruiters use it regularly. Prior research on intuition shows that it can be a source of wisdom and expertise, if used correctly. The recruiters tried to carry out the recruitment process in an as objective and transparent manner as possible. By reflecting, questioning and critically reviewing their own thoughts, opinions and feelings, they aimed to avoid making decisions and judgments based on feelings. Taking the recruiters' point of view in to account gives new insight in to the recruitment process and the issues therein.

The study investigated primary school teachers´ concepts concerning Finnish as second language (F2) pupils´ assessment at the primary school at the grades two to six. They were also defined Finnish as second language learners based on the National Core Curriculum 2004, The theoretical part provided a brief overview of the challenges in learning Finnish as a second language and the significance of mother tongue studies to strengthen multicultural identity and to learn language - also academic language in mother tongue which eases academic SLA (second language acquisition). Learning second language has two tasks: learning as a tool and as a goal to learn the contents of subjects and study modules. After that, the study discusses on pupil assessment and the usage of Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for languages learning and teaching and how to assess each student’s language learning profile. The main pedagogical principles of pupil assessment were also introduced. The key concept of the study is language awareness; linguistically responsive teaching by the teachers who teach and assess F2-pupils in a linguistically responsible way. The main research questions are: How do teachers encourage Finnish as second language pupils in learning by pupil assessment and what kind of collegial assessment cooperation teachers have. The research focused to three essential pupil assessment forms; diagnostic, formative and summative assessment. The semi-structured interview was used as a research method to interview 15 teachers. In the analysis of the interview material via content analysis, findings of phenomena could be divided into three-pupil assessment field. The discussion of results shows that several class teachers have different ways of assessing pupils who do yet manage Finnish language. Teachers of pupils’ own mother tongue saw challenging heterogeneous groups of students as well as teaching and assessing students who speak a different dialect of another country or region than the teacher. F2 teachers have a supporting role in S2 assessment and also in advising and guiding their colleagues on assessment issues - for example, in science, history and mathematics assessment. Further research may focus on the study of students' self-assessment, with its emphasis on the foundations of the national curriculum for basic education in 2014.

Advances in computational linguistics have made analyzing large quantities of text data a more feasible task than ever before. In particular, the recent distributional language models hold promise of effective semantic analysis at a low computational cost. Semantics, however, is a multifaceted phenomenon, and although various language model architectures have been presented, there is relatively little research evaluating the semantic validity of such models. The aim of this research is to evaluate the semantic validity of different distributional language models, particularly as tools for representing Finnish language online text data. The models and methods are evaluated based on their performance on three empirical studies, each estimating a different aspect of semantic representation. The language models in the studies were built using word2vec architecture. The models were taught on approximately 2.6 billion tokens from the Suomi24 corpus of Finnish language social media discussions. 18 models were built in total, each with a different combination of feature processing methods. The models were evaluated in three studies. For Study I, a resource consisting of 300 similarity ratings for word pairs from 55 human annotators was collected. This resource was used as an evaluation task by comparing model estimated similarity scores to the human rated similarity judgments. Study II investigated relational semantics as an evaluation method and were operationalized in form of an analogy task, for which a Finnish language resource is presented. In Study III, the language models were evaluated based on their performance in document classification of Suomi24 messages to their respective topics. The results of the Studies indicate that each presented evaluation task is sufficiently reliable method for estimating language model semantic validity. In turn, distributed language models are reported being able to represent semantics given morphologically rich yet fragmentary Finnish language social media data. Feature processing methods are shown to increase the semantic accuracy of language models in most cases, but to a limited extent. If evaluated valid, semantic language technologies are proposed to hold widespread applicability across scientific as well as commercial fields.

Advances in computational linguistics have made analyzing large quantities of text data a more feasible task than ever before. In particular, the recent distributional language models hold promise of effective semantic analysis at a low computational cost. Semantics, however, is a multifaceted phenomenon, and although various language model architectures have been presented, there is relatively little research evaluating the semantic validity of such models. The aim of this research is to evaluate the semantic validity of different distributional language models, particularly as tools for representing Finnish language online text data. The models and methods are evaluated based on their performance on three empirical studies, each estimating a different aspect of semantic representation. The language models in the studies were built using word2vec architecture. The models were taught on approximately 2.6 billion tokens from the Suomi24 corpus of Finnish language social media discussions. 18 models were built in total, each with a different combination of feature processing methods. The models were evaluated in three studies. For Study I, a resource consisting of 300 similarity ratings for word pairs from 55 human annotators was collected. This resource was used as an evaluation task by comparing model estimated similarity scores to the human rated similarity judgments. Study II investigated relational semantics as an evaluation method and were operationalized in form of an analogy task, for which a Finnish language resource is presented. In Study III, the language models were evaluated based on their performance in document classification of Suomi24 messages to their respective topics. The results of the Studies indicate that each presented evaluation task is sufficiently reliable method for estimating language model semantic validity. In turn, distributed language models are reported being able to represent semantics given morphologically rich yet fragmentary Finnish language social media data. Feature processing methods are shown to increase the semantic accuracy of language models in most cases, but to a limited extent. If evaluated valid, semantic language technologies are proposed to hold widespread applicability across scientific as well as commercial fields.

In the field of communication research, the academic literature on adaptation has examined the individual activities and abilities, as well as the relationship between adaptation and interaction. In addition, there has been research on adaptation as a communicative phenomenon where other people also affect the adaptation process. The aim of this study was to investigate the discourses on adaptation of Finns who lived abroad and what kind of adaptation they reproduce in the interviews. The research question was "What kind of adaptation is produced in the speech by Finnish who have lived abroad?". In this way, the aim was to gain better understanding of the phenomenon of adaptation. The study was conducted with qualitative methods by doing focused interviews. There were eight interviewees and the interviews lasted for 7 hours and 55 minutes in total. Recorded material was transcribed and there was 130 pages of transcribed text. The data was analyzed by methods of analytical discourse analysis and the focus of the analysis was on identifying the discursive structure, variations in the talk and the positions of the interviewees. As a result there were three discourses: individual adaptation discourses included active individual discourse and passive individual discourse, and the collectivistic adaptation discourse included the active community discourse. The active individual discourse emphasized the meaning of individuals' active action for adaptation. The passive individual discourse highlighted the meaning of individual qualities and characteristics of the persona for adaptation. The active community discourse emphasized interaction with others as a prerequisite for adaptation. As a conclusion, the study suggests that the versatility of adaptation discourses should be recognized and taken into account both in the societal conversation and in the field of adaptation research.

One of the most visible themes in coach education during recent years has been mental coaching, which means applying sport psychology in to coaching. Understanding of the nature of mental coaching in open skill sports and its practical applications have only started to arise. This Thesis's aim was to build a synthetic review of Finnish open skill sport studies and reflect it on international sport psychology theories. The Thesis was made with review method, which is a study based on a qualitative synthetic analysis. Material was gathered using Finnish universities publications search engines and other study search engines. The studies criteria was to be at least Licentiate and eight studies matching the criteria were found. Results were found both from the general level of sport psychology in Finland and single study subjects. Even though Finnish children start sports younger than before, the studies have all except one focused on ages 14 and above. Motivation has been a very popular subject of Finnish studies, but the new phenomena's of international sport psychology self-confidence studies have been neglected. Task-cohesion's importance in group performance was highlighted both internationally and in Finnish studies. Conclusions are made both concerning Finnish mental coaching and the need for more research. It is important for the development of Finnish open skill sports mental coaching that it will emphasize the importance of task-cohesion and the new self-confidence related phenomena's, such as self-efficacy, collective efficacy and team confidence. In the future Finnish open skill sport mental coaching needs studies of children's sport psychology. In addition intervention studies are needed to create more information on mental coaching's practical applications in open skill sports.

The learning and teaching of design is a widely researched phenomenon. Designing can be considered either as a cognitive process or from a situational perspective. These two approaches are combined in this study. Designing is defined as a process that includes three stages: the awakening of ideas, the processing of ideas and the verification of ideas. Designing is also understood as a reflective dialogue between the designer and the situation. The purpose of this study is to understand the design process from designers' perspective by identifying facilitators and barriers of the design process. The study also aims to deepen this understanding by exploring how these facilitators and barriers appear in different stages of the design process. The results are used to create a tool that helps to facilitate the design process. All participants in this study were students of Textiles Teacher Education at the University of Helsinki. The data was collected through 40 empathy-based stories and three interviews. The data was analysed using qualitative content analysis and this defines the structure of the study. The study identified 118 facilitators and/or barriers that were categorized into 10 main themes and 2 emotion-related themes. The themes of Design idea and Social space encompassed both facilitators and barriers. The themes of Motivation, Expectations, Time and pressure, Situational constraints, and the Designer's experience of the design process included factors which can act as either barriers or facilitators depending on the situation. The themes of Ways of working and Ways of developing the design included factors that were related to designers' choices which may either facilitate or hinder the design process. The theme of Understanding and reflection was considered as important in facilitating the design process as it did not include any factors which could hinder the process. The two emotion-related themes included both individual factors and situational factors. These emotional factors are either facilitators or barriers of the design process. The quantification of the qualitative data showed that some of the facilitators and barriers appear differently during different stages of the design process. Based on the findings of this study, a tool to facilitate the design process was created.

The learning and teaching of design is a widely researched phenomenon. Designing can be considered either as a cognitive process or from a situational perspective. These two approaches are combined in this study. Designing is defined as a process that includes three stages: the awakening of ideas, the processing of ideas and the verification of ideas. Designing is also understood as a reflective dialogue between the designer and the situation. The purpose of this study is to understand the design process from designers' perspective by identifying facilitators and barriers of the design process. The study also aims to deepen this understanding by exploring how these facilitators and barriers appear in different stages of the design process. The results are used to create a tool that helps to facilitate the design process. All participants in this study were students of Textiles Teacher Education at the University of Helsinki. The data was collected through 40 empathy-based stories and three interviews. The data was analysed using qualitative content analysis and this defines the structure of the study. The study identified 118 facilitators and/or barriers that were categorized into 10 main themes and 2 emotion-related themes. The themes of Design idea and Social space encompassed both facilitators and barriers. The themes of Motivation, Expectations, Time and pressure, Situational constraints, and the Designer's experience of the design process included factors which can act as either barriers or facilitators depending on the situation. The themes of Ways of working and Ways of developing the design included factors that were related to designers' choices which may either facilitate or hinder the design process. The theme of Understanding and reflection was considered as important in facilitating the design process as it did not include any factors which could hinder the process. The two emotion-related themes included both individual factors and situational factors. These emotional factors are either facilitators or barriers of the design process. The quantification of the qualitative data showed that some of the facilitators and barriers appear differently during different stages of the design process. Based on the findings of this study, a tool to facilitate the design process was created.

Objectives. This study examined the associations between temperament traits as defined by Cloninger's psychobiological theory of personality (novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence and persistence) and class teachers' depression. Depression in varying severity grade is a huge public health problem and causes sick leaves, disability pensions, and changing one's careers. Teachers' depressive symptoms have been shown to have an influence also on the pupils' ability to learn and even their future. Teachers' profession has proven to be among the hardest and stress prone. The work demands a lot of emotional procession and interactions. This is often combined with too heavy workload and too short time to recover. One way to be able to intervene and prevent depression is to search factors that increase the risk of or protect individuals from depression. The research has found individual differences in temperament traits to be this kind of factors. There has still been very little research on temperament traits and depression in teacher populations. Methods. The data used were from a pilot study, the collection of which started during the spring 2013. Schools from the metropolitan area of Finland were randomized. First grade class teachers (classes 1.-6.) in these schools received questionnaires. 54 teachers took part in this research, 49 of them were women and 5 men. They were 44 years old on average and they had 18 years of education on average. Temperament was measured using Cloninger's TCI-questionnaire ((Temperament and Character Inventory). The amount and intensity of depressive symptoms were measured using BDI-II inventory (Beck Depression Inventory II). Results and conclusions. The results showed that high harm avoidance predicted more depressive symptoms among class teachers, which gave support to previous research. The results showed also that persistence predicted more depressive symptoms, which brought new information to research field. Besides the working conditions it would be important to take in to consideration also teachers' individual characters when driving to prevent depression and promote the well-being of teachers.