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Refining Personality Disorder Assessment Procedures: The Relationship Between Mcmi-Ii And Scid-Ii, Robert J. Pass

Student Work

The purpose of this study was to examine the compatibility of personality disorder diagnoses made by a self-report questionnaire (Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, MCMI-II) and a standardized interview (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R, Axis II, SCID-II). Diagnoses of 50 intake clients at NOVA Therapeutic Community's residential facility were compared using Chi-Square analysis. Agreement between the two instruments was promising at the cluster level (p

Attitudinal And Perceptual Differences Between Experienced And Novice National Park Users, Rebecca Lynne Van Cleave

Doctoral Dissertations

One of the primary goals of the National Park Service is to protect the natural environments of its parks. At the same time the Park Service must provide quality experiences for its visitors. At times these two goals may seem mutually exclusive. For the Park Service to maintain a balance between protection and use management must possess a thorough understanding of the visitors to the parks. The present research sought to extend this understanding.

The goals of this research were: to explore differences in attitudes towards and perceptions of Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) by different user groups; to …

Self-Concepts Of Career Level Ii And Iii Teachers And Career Ladder Eligible Teachers In The Public Schools Of Tennessee, Lois C. Myers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a significant difference in the self concept of Career Level II and III teachers and teachers who are eligible to apply but have not elected to participate in the Career Ladder Program in the public schools of Tennessee. The technique of causal-comparative research was used in this study. The Tennessee Self Concept Scale (TSCS), developed by William Fitts, was selected as the appropriate instrument for use in this study. The TSCS is a versatile instrument that measures ten dimensions related to self concept: total level of self esteem, self …

"The Road Not Taken": A Phenomenological Investigation Of The Experience Of Regret, Daniel Matthew Gordon

Doctoral Dissertations

The Purpose of this study was to investigate the human experience of regret in order to discover and describe the essential nature of the experience. A phenomenological approach was taken, employing a dialogical interview method. Twelve participants volunteered for an unstructured, open-ended interview in which they were asked to describe their personal experiences of regret.

Analysis of the interview transcripts by thematizing significant statements revealed three essential themes of the experience of regret. The experience of regret is comprised of opportunities/consequences, blaming oneself, and looking back/looking forward.

Opportunities consist of an awareness of a choice, feelings of uncertainty, and a …

Congress And Early Federalist Military Policy: An Examination Of Defense Related Roll Calls In The Second United States Congress, 1792-1793, Elbert S. Barker Iii

Theses and Dissertations

The legislators of the Second United States House of Representatives faced a set of challenging military and political problems when they met in November 1791. The issue of what would be the primary means of the young nation's defense had not yet been determined. The old British and colonial precedents of a militia as the first line of defense were firmly rooted in the minds of most congressmen meeting in Philadelphia. Many of the legislators had been indelibly imprinted with a fear of a large standing army in peacetime from their own personal experiences in the pre-Revolutionary days. Many of …

Experimental And Theoretical Analyses Of Instructional Tasks: Reading, Discrimination, And Construction, Satoru Shimamune

Dissertations

The effectiveness and efficiency of three kinds of workbooks were compared in teaching behavioral systems analysis to college students. Each workbook contained the same content but utilized different types of instructional tasks. The reading workbook had the definitions, and examples and nonexamples of the concepts to be taught, and the subjects were asked to read them. The discrimination workbook had the same definitions, examples and nonexamples, but the subjects were asked to work on discriminating the examples from the nonexamples. Feedback was given with regard to the correctness of the subjects' responses. The construction workbook had the same definitions of …

Detection Of Sexual Cues: An Assessment Of Nonaggressive And Sexually Coercive College Males, Rita Kenyon-Jump

Dissertations

Seventy-four nonaggressive and 78 sexually coercive college males, as determined by the Sexual Experiences Survey (Koss & Oros, 1982) and ranging in age from 18-25 years, participated in a study designed to assess their ability to detect specific behavioral cues of female partners’ unwillingness to engage in kissing, genital fondling, and sexual intercourse. Contrary to prediction, a 2 (nonaggression and sexual coercion) X 3 (kissing, fondling, and intercourse) analysis of variance revealed no statistically significant difference between the nonaggressive and sexually coercive males in their ability to detect cues of female unwillingness to engage in kissing, genital fondling, and sexual …

Training And Maintenance Of Breast Self-Examination Skills, Bernardine M. Pinto

Dissertations

Maintenance of breast self-examination (BSE) skills is crucial to the effectiveness of self-exams in early detection of breast tumors. While researchers have developed an effective technology for training these skills, the maintenance of BSE proficiency is questionable (Pennypacker et al., 1982). The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of reassessment (and retraining) on the maintenance of BSE skills. Twenty-nine women (ages 25-64) were trained to criterion using the MammaCare training package. Experimental subjects were required to demonstrate their skills at a 2 month reassessment and received retraining if their skills had declined below criterion. Control subjects were …

Neuropsychological Effects Of Short-Term Abstinence In Adolescent Alcoholics, Asiah Mayang

Dissertations

The Michigan Neuropsychological Battery (Smith, 1975) was administered to 14 to 17-year-old alcoholics from an inpatient and outpatient substance abuse treatment center within 7 days of their last drink, and again after 28-33 days of abstinence (a = 26). Comparisons were made between this group and an adolescent alcoholic group who did not abstain and was not receiving treatment for their alcohol abuse (n = 15). The non-abstaining group was also given the same test battery twice. Results indicated that subjects who abstained from drinking (experimental group) performed better than subjects who did not abstain (control group) on measures of …

An Arbitrary Matching Training Supplement To The Avc Discrimination Test, Charles P. Butler

Masters Theses

Kerr, Meyerson and Flora (1977) devised a series of small learning tasks that could be used to assess developmentally disabled individuals on the typical tasks to be performed in a school setting or sheltered workshop and required only very simple equipment. Davine (1990) suggested that there may be transitional skills between AVC levels IV and V not found by Kerr et al. Davine looked at four experimental steps designed to test this notion. The results of this study were inconclusive. Wilson (1991) tested the same notion by devising a series of non identity matching tasks which were generally found to …

A Study Of Ninth Grade Students' Satisfaction With School And Self-Esteem In Two Grade Organization Patterns, Marcia Jane Brokenik Fivizzani

Theses and Dissertations

This study focused on ninth grade students attending school in two grade organization patterns, 7 through 9 and 9 through 12. Students' satisfaction levels with school as measured by the NASSP Student Satisfaction Survey and students' self-esteem measures on the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory were assessed to determine whether a relationship between grade organization, gender, satisfaction with school, and self-esteem existed. Ninth graders from one upper midwest community who attended a four-year high school (N=317) or a 7 through 9 junior high school

Findings revealed that both schools scored within the average range on all subscales of the Student Satisfaction Survey. …

Inservice Training And Accessing Knowledge: The Perceived Needs Of Parents And Educators Of Children With Special Needs In North Dakota, Randal W. Eckart

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose and procedure. The purpose of this study was to provide a detailed analysis of needs assessment data regarding inservice training and accessing knowledge as perceived by parents, special education teachers, general education teachers, related services providers, and administrators in the state of North Dakota. These five groups were surveyed by the Bureau of Educational Services and Applied Research at the University of North Dakota. Resulting data were statistically analyzed utilizing frequency distributions and percentages to identify perceived needs for accessing knowledge or skills in special education and inservice training.

Conclusions and recommendations. Educators prioritized concerns over programming and instruction …

Examination Of Community Mental Health Services For Persons With Serious Mental Illness: A Descriptive Study Of 31 Counties In Michigan, Pamela C. Werner

Masters Theses

Thirty-one out of 55 Community Mental Health Boards participated in a survey conducted by the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Michigan. This study examined a number of variables in the questionnaire using a product-moment correlational analysis.

Results indicated that family and consumer input is modestly correlated with comprehensive service delivery and staff/consumer education and training. Budget and the active number of mentally ill cases had a low correlation with comprehensive service delivery and staff/consumer education and training. Interagency collaboration was modestly correlated with program evaluation, and comprehensive services available to consumers. Weaknesses were noted in the management structure of …

The Problems Of Assessing Change In Hopelessness Among Employees In Employee Assistance Programs, James Paul Porowski

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Hope has been designated by many theorists as playing an important part in both psychological and physical healing. However, to this point, whether or not time-limited psychotherapy can increase the level of hope in clients has not been adequately investigated. This study sought to measure the level of hope in participants pre-therapy and post-therapy by the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS). It also sought to explore the special problems that are encountered when conducting research within an Employee Assistance Program. Three hypotheses were proposed. The first stated that groups would differ in pretest hopelessness levels according to type of presenting problem. …

Psychoanalytic Object-Relations Theory And Western Orthodox Theology: Toward An Integrative Dialogue, Bruce H. Pickle

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

This is a study of humankind from the perspectives of a representative from psychology, the psychoanalytic British object-relations physician and psychoanalyst, William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn, M.D. (1889 to 1965), and from theology, the Western Orthodox Christian Dominican theologian and Doctor of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, O.P. (Order of Preachers) (1225 to 1274).

These theorist/practitioners share a common scientific and philosophical method dedicated to the discovery of reality under God. Each believed that a person's nature is relationally based. Both believed that the person is a psyche and soma, a psychological and biological, unity. Each believed that turning from real …

Crying Women: An Investigation Of The Lived Experience Of Women With And Without Cancer, Jean W. Hunt

Doctoral Dissertations

This study attempts a more holistic perspective on cancer and the emotions than previous research which has tended to focus on either biological, psychological or social aspects individually. Crying was chosen as an aspect of human existence which simultaneously implicates biological, psychological and social aspects of being human. Over a 30-day period, frequency and intensity of crying behavior was tracked in a group of 27 women with cancer and 22 women without. Women in this study ranged from 20 to 69 years of age. Among women with cancer, fifteen were participants in therapist facilitated psychosocial support groups and eleven were …

A Qualitative Study Of First-Person Accounts Of Living With A Stutter, Peter James Columbus

Doctoral Dissertations

Eight males and four females who stutter were interviewed regarding their everyday life experiences with stuttering. The interviews were analyzed using a qualitative, intuitive/inductive method. Results revealed four major experimental themes: The Burden of Stuttering, Living with Difference, Living with Constraints, and Negotiating Life. The Burden of Stuttering theme refers to the participant's experience of the effort involved in discoordinated speech, contending with interactional order between self and other, effectively communicating spoken messages, and their uncertainty about the occurrence of stuttering and listener reactions to it. Living with Difference refers to experiences of dissimilarity between self and fluent speaking others; …

Mdma And Memory: The Acute And Chronic Effects Of Mdma In Pigeons Performing Under A Delayed-Matching-To-Sample Procedure, Mark Lesage

Masters Theses

The physiological effects of (+) 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) have been studied extensively. The behavioral effects of MDMA, however, have not been examined in detail. In an attempt to gain further information about its behavioral effects, the acute and chronic effects of MDMA were examined in pigeons responding under a delayed-matching-to-sample procedure with 0-, 3-, and 6-s delays. In the absence of drug, accuracy (percentage o f correct responses) was inversely related to delay length. When administered pre-chronically, MDMA (0.32 to 5.6 mg/kg) decreased accuracy and response rates at higher doses. Tolerance developed following chronic exposure to 3.2 mg/kg. Performance did not …

Time As A Shared Resource : The Effects Of Depression And Behavior Verifiability On Perceptions Of Temporal Investment, Jody Lynn Jones

Master's Theses

People have a tendency to view themselves in a more favorable light than they do others, a phenomenon termed the egocentric bias (Messick, Bloom, Boldizar, & Samuelson, 1985). Past research has shown that people are more likely to display the bias in situations that are "nonverifiable", meaning that there is no way to accurately measure the dimension on which judgments are made (Allison, Messick, & Goethals, 1989). Two experiments tested the hypothesis that only nondepressed individuals in a nonverifiable situation would show the egocentric bias, whereas non depressed subjects in the verifiable condition and depressed subjects in both conditions would …

Relations Among Perspective Taking, Egocentrism, And Self-Esteem In Late Adolescents, Kimberly D. Leister

Master's Theses

This study examined the relations among perspective taking, egocentrism, and self-esteem in a sample of 113 undergraduate college students. Self-report measures of the the three constructs were used. Subjects in different levels of perspective taking did not differ significantly from one another in either egocentrism or self-esteem. Pearson correlations revealed that egocentrism was not related to self-esteem in level 2 perspective takers, but that these two constructs were negatively related in 3 perspective takers. Additionally, when subjects were in level 2 perspective taking, feedback did not alter their perceptions of themselves. However, when in level 3, feedback did affect subjects' …

The Effects Of Public-Posted Feedback On The Use Of A Photocopy Machine By Faculty In An Academic Department, Shijing Hu

Masters Theses

This study assessed the effects of a public-posting intervention on photocopy machine use by faculty members in an academic department. Public posting included posting of a chart that displayed number of copies made each week by individual faculty members along with the average cumulative rate of copying for previous weeks for each person. The intervention was applied in an A-B-A reversal design where data were collected prior to the intervention under usual conditions (A), during public posting (B), and after the public posting intervention was removed and usual conditions were restored (A). The results indicated that: (1) number of copies …

Applied Relaxation Training In The Treatment Of Genital Herpes, Kent A. Koehn

Dissertations

Four individuals with frequent recurrences of genital herpes simplex virus (HSV) were trained in Applied Relaxation (AR). Participants included in the research were all women, had been diagnosed with herpes at least one year prior to the study, experienced 6 or more outbreaks annually, and were not taking antiviral medications.

The experiment employed a multiple baseline across subjects design with individual baselines of 11, 13, 17, and 21 weeks. Participants maintained daily diary recordings of the frequency, duration, and severity of their herpes activity from baseline until a minimum of three months post-treatment.

Treatment consisted of 10 individual AR sessions. …

The Effect Of Public Posting And Supervisor Recognition On Treatment Team Performance In A Mental Health Institution, Susan Mencarelli

Masters Theses

This study compared the effects of public posting and supervisor recognition on the performance of professional staff in a mental health institution. Eleven indicators of successful performance in the writing of patient treatment plans were established after an analysis of existing standards. Seven treatment teams comprised the subjects of the study and included psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, activity therapists, and residential care aides. Group performance data were used. The measurement and scoring systems which were developed proved to be highly reliable.

Neither form of performance feedback resulted in consistent improvement in performance on any of the eleven indicators. This …

A Comparison Study Of The Wisc-Iii And Wisc-R With A Special Education Population, Henry P. Green

Student Work

The purpose of this study was to determine the degree of comparability between the WISC-R and the WISC-III over a three year period. The subjects were 207 children, 124 Learning Disabled, 51 Mental Disabled, and 32 Behavior Disabled, enrolled in special education, in a large urban district (Omaha, Nebraska) and several rural districts in southwest Iowa. Results from the comparison study between WISC-III and WISC-R supports the hypothesis that students in the special education population tend to have significantly lower IQs on the WISC-III than the WISC-R. A significant decrease in Full Scale IQ scores was found in the mental …

Expectancy Effects As Moderated By Expecter Need For Achievement And Target Self-Consciousness, Paula Ethington Felchner

Student Work

The phenomenon labeled "self-fulfilling prophecy” is one of the most widely researched areas of psychology (Miller & Turnbull, 1986). However, even after more than three decades of research related to the effects of expectancies, opinion about the importance and even the existence of selffulfilling prophecy is mixed (Jussim, 1991). Effect sizes are often small (Rosenthal & Rubin, 1978; Jussim, 1991), but even small effects cannot always be considered inconsequential. In certain settings small effects of invalid expectancies may rob individuals of opportunities to which they are entitled. Accordingly, this study was undertaken to evaluate the moderating effects of personality on …

The Role Of Cognitive Distractibility In Special Education Diagnosis, Mavis A. Nigro

Student Work

The three factor scores that Kaufman (1975) measured on the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (Freedom from Distractibility, Perceptual Organization, and Verbal Comprehension) were compared among students referred and/or placed in special education. Three diagnostic groups were compared: behavioral disordered (BD) , learning disabled (LD) and students who were referred but not placed in special education. Results indicated a significant factor structure difference on the WISC-R for the BD and LD diagnostic groups, but not for the referred but not placed students. However, only the LD group manifested a significantly lower distractibility factor score when compared to the referred but …

The Effect Of Being An Adult Child Of An Alcoholic On The Spiritual Well-Being Of Evangelical Christians, Dennis W. Henderson

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

In the last decade there has been a proliferation of research on adult children of alcoholics (ACAs). However, the religious domain of ACAs has received little investigation. Wilson (1988) studied Evangelical Christian ACAs and included a brief assessment of their religious well-being. She found that ACAs report lower religious well-being than nonACAs. The purpose of this investigation was to examine further Wilson's finding and to ask whether Evangelical ACAs can be differentiated from non-ACAs based on spiritual well-being as measured by the Spiritual WellBeing Scale (SWB) . The study included 136 adults who were gathered from three Portland, Oregon area …

Causal Analysis Of A National Study Of Sales Personnel Turnover Functionality, Eric J. Vanetti

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

A causal model of the antecedents of turnover functionality was developed and tested in a national field study of sales representatives from a Fortune 50 company. Turnover functionality was defined in terms of the difference between the performance levels of leavers and stayers in the host organization. Questionnaire data were collected from 1,732 salespeople, and it was predicted that the hypothesized model would be confirmed by the obtained data. Several forms of supporting evidence for the model were obtained. First, the hypothesized model provided a better, more parsimonious fit to the obtained data than did two plausible alternative models. Second, …

The Effects Of Automation And Task Difficulty On Crew Coordination, Workload, And Performance, Ruth Coleen Thornton

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The purposes of this research were two-fold: (1) to assess the reliability and utility of the Aircrew Coordination Observation and Evaluation scales in describing crew coordination behaviors exhibited during flight and (2) to investigate the effects of automation on crew coordination, workload, and performance. Two levels of automation (i.e., presence or absence of an autopilot) and two levels of task difficulty (i.e., presence or absence of wind and turbulence) were combined to yield a 2 x 2 design. Twenty-four two-person crews performed in both levels of automation and one of two levels of task difficulty. The results of the reliability …

A Comparison Of Student Perceptions And Uses Of Accreditation At Selected Minnesota Technical Colleges, Kenneth W. Henry

Theses and Dissertations

The study compared perceptions and use of accreditation among students attending Minnesota technical colleges holding three different types of accreditation.

A total of 777 students from three different academic program areas were surveyed. The students were selected from eight technical colleges. Four colleges were accredited by the NCA Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, two colleges were accredited by NCA Colleges and Schools, and two colleges were accredited by the Minnesota State Board of Technical Colleges.

Students do use and possess some awareness of accreditation. Accreditation was used by 36.5 percent of the students in their choice of colleges and …