Judgmental-analytical procedures for adapting tests: Adaptation to Spanish of the Reasoning Tests Battery

Adapting a test between cultures or languages requires taking into account legal, linguistic, metric, and use-related considerations. Significantly more attention has been paid to the methodological aspects involved in the study of metric equivalence than to judgmental-analytical procedures prior to the empirical confirmation stage. However, considering the latter is crucial in the adaptation process. Along these lines, this paper seeks to describe and focus on the relevance of the previous stages, thereby offering a systematization process that comprises ten sections. This approach contributes to ensuring the construction of a test adapted and equivalent in as much as possible to the original. This process is exemplified by means of a Spanish language adaptation of a cognitive test originally designed in Portuguese for the Portuguese population, the Reasoning Test Battery. Copyright (C) 2013, Konrad Lorenz University Foundation. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U.

Implementación y evaluación de un algoritmo de ocultación de datos para la señal de voz.

[ES]El objetivo de este proyecto es la implementación de un algoritmo de ocultación de datos para la señal de voz mediante el uso de su información de fase espectral. Cuando se trabaja con señales de voz lo más habitual es utilizar el módulo debido a su sencillez a la hora de manipularlo y porque está relacionado con la percepción. En este caso, se busca que la información oculta sea perceptualmente y estadísticamente indetectable y que a su vez degrade lo menos posible la calidad de la señal, por lo que modificar el módulo produciría efectos no deseados. Por lo tanto, el método más eficaz de conseguirlo es trabajando con la fase espectral, precisamente por el hecho de que el sistema auditivo humano es menos sensible ante modificaciones de fase. Esta característica es la que se aprovechará para introducir la información que se desea ocultar. Por último, se evaluará la técnica desarrollada de acuerdo a diferentes criterios. Mediante pruebas en las que se modificarán los valores de algunos parámetros se obtendrán resultados relacionados con la perceptibilidad, la robustez, el rendimiento o la capacidad entre otros, determinando así la configuración óptima del algoritmo.

Abundance of harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) in three Alaskan regions, corrected for observer errors due to perception bias and species misidentification, and corrected for animals submerged from view

Estimating the abundance of cetaceans from aerial survey data requires careful attention to survey design and analysis. Once an aerial observer perceives a marine mammal or group of marine mammals, he or she has only a few seconds to identify and enumerate the individuals sighted, as well as to determine the distance to the sighting and record this information. In line-transect survey analyses, it is assumed that the observer has correctly identified and enumerated the group or individual. We describe methods used to test this assumption and how survey data should be adjusted to account for observer errors. Harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) were censused during aerial surveys in the summer of 1997 in Southeast Alaska (9844 km survey effort), in the summer of 1998 in the Gulf of Alaska (10,127 km), and in the summer of 1999 in the Bering Sea (7849 km). Sightings of harbor porpoise during a beluga whale (Phocoena phocoena) survey in 1998 (1355 km) provided data on harbor porpoise abundance in Cook Inlet for the Gulf of Alaska stock. Sightings by primary observers at side windows were compared to an independent observer at a belly window to estimate the probability of misidentification, underestimation of group size, and the probability that porpoise on the surface at the trackline were missed (perception bias, g(0)). There were 129, 96, and 201 sightings of harbor porpoises in the three stock areas, respectively. Both g(0) and effective strip width (the realized width of the survey track) depended on survey year, and g(0) also depended on the visibility reported by observers. Harbor porpoise abundance in 1997–99 was estimated at 11,146 animals for the Southeast Alaska stock, 31,046 animals for the Gulf of Alaska stock, and 48,515 animals for the Bering Sea stock.