Abstract-Scientific evaluation papers investigate existing problem situations or validate proposed solutions with scientific means, such as by experiment or case study. There is a growing amount of literature about how to report about empirical research in software engineering, but there is still some confusion about the difference between a scientific evaluation paper and other kinds of research papers. This is related to lack of clarity about the relation between empirical research, engineering, and industrial practice. In this minitutorial we give a brief rundown on how to structure a scientific evaluation papers as a special kind of research paper, using experiment reports and case study reports as examples. We give checklists of items that a reader should be able to find in these papers, and sketch the dilemmas that writers and readers of these papers face when applying these checklists.

Aims and objectives: This study investigates possible causes of physical disability among European nurses, and deals with personal, physical and (social) work environment factors. Design: 39,898 (51.7%) nurses responded to our survey (6335 head nurses; 4933 specialized nurses; 24,142 state-registered nurses; and 4488 nursing aids). Methodology: First, the prevalence of physical disability among nurses in Europe was investigated. Second, multivariate analyses were performed to better understand the influence of possible risk factors for physical disability. A Strobe statement has been added. Results: In general, the risk of physical disability is positively associated with the amount of physical load and the nurses' dissatisfaction with this, with a lack of teamwork quality, harassment by supervisors, colleagues not (quite) ready to help, not having lifting aids, a high quantitative work demand, and having to work in split shifts. The main moderating or buffering factors addressed in this study are having a part-time job, practice of sport and/or hobbies, and the nurses' social work environment. Relevance to Clinical Practice: Today, there is a substantial shortage of nurses in Europe, and management in healthcare organizations that fails to improve physical working conditions and to provide adequate (career) support might suffer from, will experience growing levels of disability and dissatisfaction among nursing staff that might result in premature leave, reduced productivity or higher absenteeism.

Innovations can be seen as chains of non-routine decisions. With each decision, the innovator has to assess how important the various decision attributes are. Because the decisions are nonroutine, innovators cannot fall back on judgements of past importance. Most decision support methods elicit importance judgements but do not help innovators or other decision-makers with the mental processes leading to the judgment. The 'importance assessment process' can be divided into seven phases (such as (sub-)attribute processing and various forms of weighting). The phase '(sub)-attribute processing' is the most important phase in terms of effort devoted to it, and the most obvious pitfalls that prevent valid importance assessments appear in this phase. This article describes some of these pitfalls. A few simple instruments may provide better-founded importance judgements that can be better communicated to other actors involved in innovation processes.

How do actors involved in the acquisition of a capital good assess the importance of its attributes? And what is the role of expertise? Numerous instruments exist for measuring the importance attached to attributes, but little is known about the importance assessment process that precedes these importance judgments.Expectations concerning the behaviour of actors facing non-routine importance assessment problems are tested, yielding some interesting results. Firstly, the behaviour of these actors is consistent with a newly developed phase model. Even with a non-routine problem, structuring the assessment problem takes less effort than the actual weighting. Surprisingly, weighting attributes in isolation gets much more emphasis than weighting them against each other, despite the latter being the essence of importance judgments. Despite the subjects being laymen, they showed high confidence in their work.Finally, predictions concerning the behaviour of experts are made, based on Van der Heijden's [1] dimensions of expertise.

Biographical notesHans Heerkens (1958) is assistant professor at the department of Business, Public Administration and Technology of the University of Twente, the Netherlands. He teaches on research and problem-solving methodology for undergraduate and PhD-students and on management in the aerospace industry. Hans also contributes to aerospace trade journals.