Purpose: This paper aims to discuss multilevel modeling for longitudinal data, clarifying the circumstances in which they can be used. Design/methodology/approach: The authors estimate three-level models with repeated measures, offering conditions for their correct interpretation. Findings: From the concepts and techniques presented, the authors can propose models, in which it is possible to identify the fixed and random effects on the dependent variable, understand the variance decomposition of multilevel random effects, test alternative covariance structures to account for heteroskedasticity and calculate and interpret the intraclass correlations of each analysis level. Originality/value: Understanding how nested data structures and data with repeated measures work enables researchers and managers to define several types of constructs from which multilevel models can be used.

Language models based on deep learning showed promising results for artistic generation purposes, including musical generation. However, the evaluation of symbolic musical generation models is mostly based on low-level mathematical metrics (e.g., the result of the loss function) due to the inherent difficulty in measuring the musical quality of a given performance due to the subjective nature of music. This work sought to measure and evaluate musical excerpts generated by deep learning models from a human perspective, limited to the scope of classical piano music generation. In this assessment, a population of 117 people performed blind tests with musical excerpts of human composition and musical excerpts generated using artificial intelligence models, including the models PerformanceRNN, Music Transformer, MuseNet and a custom model based on GRUs. The experiments demonstrated that musical excerpts generated using models based on the Transformer neural network architecture obtained the greatest receptivity within the tested population, surpassing the results of human compositions. In addition, the experiments also demonstrated that people with greater musical sensitivity and musical experience were more able to identify the compositional origin of the excerpts heard.

The healthcare environment presents a large volume of personal and sensitive patient data that needs to be available and secure. Information and communication technology brings a new reality to healthcare, promoting improvements, agility and integration. Regarding high-level and complex decision-making scenarios, the Brazilian Navy (BN), concerning its healthcare field, is seeking to provide better management of its respective processes in its hospital facilities, allowing accurate control of preventive and curative medicine to members who work or have served there in past years. The study addresses the understanding, structure and clarifying variables related to the feasibility of technological updating and installing of a Hospital Information System (HIS) for BN. In this scenario, through interviews and analysis of military organization business processes, criteria and alternatives were established based on multi-criteria methodology as a decision aid. As methodological support for research and data processing, THOR 2 and PROMETHEE-SAPEVO-M1 methods were approached, both based on the scenarios of outranking alternatives based on the preferences established by the stakeholders in the problem. As a result of the methodological implementation, we compare the two implemented methods in this context, exposing the Commercial Software Purchase and Adoption of Free Software, integrated into Customization by the Marine Studies Foundation, as favorable actions to be adopted concerning HIS feasibility. This finding generates a comprehensive discussion regarding the BN perspective and changes in internal development in the military environment, prospecting alignment to the culture of private organizations in Information Technology for healthcare management. In the end, we present some conclusions concerning the study, exploring the main points of the decision-making analysis and for future research.

Our article explores an underused mathematical analytical methodology in the social sciences. In addition to describing the method and its advantages, we extend a previously reported application of mixed models in a well-known database about corruption in 149 countries. The dataset in the mentioned study included a reasonable amount of zeros (13.19%) in the outcome variable, which is typical of this type of research, as well as quite a bit of social sciences research. In our paper, present detailed guidelines regarding the estimation of models where the data for the outcome variable includes an excess number of zeros, and the dataset has a natural nested structure. We believe our research is not likely to reject the hypothesis favoring the adoption of mixed modeling and the inflation of zeros over the original simpler framework. Instead, our results demonstrate the importance of considering random effects at country levels and the zero-inflated nature of the outcome variable.