Validity, content-related behavior

Audit instruments can be evaluated on the basis of three different types of validity when linking the audit to safety performance. These are content-related, criterion-related, and construct-related procedures for accumulating evidence of validity (Anastasi 1988, 139). Content-related validity involves the examination of the audit content to determine whether it covers a representative sample of the behaviors to be measured. Criterion-related validity procedures indicate the effectiveness of an audit in predicting performance in specified activities. The performance on the audit is checked against a criterion that is considered a direct and independent measure of what the audit was intended to measure. The third type of validity, construct validity, is the extent to which the audit is said to be measuring a theoretical construct or trait. Construct validation requires accumulation of information from a variety of sources. 

The maimer in which the list of critical behaviors is developed ensures a degree of content-based validity. These are behaviors that are related to incidents or that safety professionals believe to involve risk. Krause argues that behavior is the final common path for accidents. Although this is easy to demonstrate when people faU, catch their hand in a machine, or are struck by a falling object, the connection is often much more complicated when a plane crashes or a refinery catches fire. There are undoubtedly acts and failures to act involved in each of these, but an analysis of individual behavior is a rather inefficient way to understand the root causes of these events. 

The flags can be associated with the content by the content provider, the content broker, the service provider, or even the visitors to the related sites. However, because appropriate flags can be determined only if the content is known, the most feasible way is to rely on the content provider. The problem is that if the provider consciously and intentionally wishes to hide the truth about the content or even to mislead the potential visitors/readers, there is practically no way of preventing such behavior. This is a teal problem in the case of the above-mentioned hurtful, damaging, or corrupting contents, but also with any other contents as well, as far as their characteristics (validity, value, adequacy, age, etc.) arc concerned. 

The rheology of blends of linear and branched PLA architectures has also been comprehensively investigated [42, 44]. For linear architectures, the Cox-Merz rule relating complex viscosity to shear viscosity is valid for a large range of shear rates and frequencies. The branched architecture deviates from the Cox-Merz equality and blends show intermediate behavior. Both the zero shear viscosity and the elasticity (as measured by the recoverable shear compliance) increase with increasing branched content. For the linear chain, the compliance is independent of temperature, but this behavior is apparently lost for the branched and blended materials. These authors use the Carreau-Ya-suda model. Equation 10.29, to describe the viscosity shear rate dependence of both linear and branched PLAs and their blends ... 

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