Ontology-based automated support for goal–use case model analysis

Combining goal-oriented and use case modeling has been proven to be an effective method in requirements elicitation and elaboration. To ensure the quality of such modeled artifacts, a detailed model analysis needs to be performed. However, current requirements engineering approaches generally lack reliable support for automated analysis of consistency, correctness and completeness (3Cs problems) between and within goal models and use case models. In this paper, we present a goal–use case integration framework with tool support to automatically identify such 3Cs problems. Our new framework relies on the use of ontologies of domain knowledge and semantics and our goal–use case integration meta-model. Moreover, functional grammar is employed to enable the semiautomated transformation of natural language specifications into Manchester OWL Syntax for automated reasoning. The evaluation of our tool support shows that for representative example requirements, our approach achieves over 85 % soundness and completeness rates and detects more problems than the benchmark applications.

Understanding consumer participation in mental health: issues of power and change

Consumer participation occurs in all Victorian public mental health services. Area mental health services employ consumer consultants to enhance consumer participation across the network. Ongoing support of management is essential to the success of consumer participation. This project aimed to explore understandings of consumer participation from a manager's perspective. Semistructured interviews were conducted with seven participants in this qualitative, interpretive study. The thematic analysis revealed the complexities around defining consumer participation and demonstrated the difficulties and possible reasons as to why there is no real clarity between managers, service providers, and consumers as to what consumer participation should look like. Power and change were the primary themes. Power and the overwhelming consensus that the medical model and those working within it hold the most power was strongly represented in this study. Legislation and workplace settings were seen as considerable factors adding to the disempowerment of consumers within an already disempowering mental health system. Change was the other main theme that emerged, with culture and attitudes of the old ‘institutionalized’ thinking that still pervades some pockets of mental health services being seen as the major barriers to change. The role of the consumer consultant was a prominent subtheme, with their role in training and the education of workers seen as an essential and positive way to progress consumer participation. These findings demonstrate that managers consider there to be hope for consumers, brought about by collective action and lobbying, and through consumer participation in less-restrictive parts of the service (community settings).

Can consumer price index predict gold price returns?

In this paper using data for 54 countries we test whether consumer price index (CPI) predicts gold price returns. Our test for predictability is based on a recently developed flexible generalised least squares estimator, which most importantly accommodates the endogeneity of CPI, its persistency and any heteroskedasticity in the model. We find limited evidence that CPI predicts gold price returns in in-sample tests; however, out-of-sample tests reveal relatively strong evidence that CPI predicts gold returns. These results are robust to different forecasting horizons. On the whole, we discover reasonable evidence that consumer prices predict gold price returns.