Digital Commons Network^™

Principals’ Perceptions Of Administration – Related Uses Of The Internet: An Exploratory Study, Ekoka Andrew Molindo

Student Work

The use of computers in assisting in administrative tasks has revolutionized the workforce. Today, principals and administrators in many fields rely on accurate, fast, inexpensive and up-to-date information in order to make sound decisions. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of school principals regarding the use of the Internet for administrative purposes. This descriptive study focused on the potential benefits and problems of Internet use perceived by school principals. The research questions focused on seven areas: demographics, attitudes, benefits of the Internet, frequency of use, experience, policies and issues. A total of 292 principals in Nebraska …

Peer Versus Adult Models: Infants Immediate And Deferred Imitation Of Familiar And Novel Events, Robina Enayat Gul

Student Work

The present study examined the effects of different aged models (adult vs. peer) on infants' memory and imitative behaviors. Thirty infants between the age of 14- to 18-months were included in the study. Fifteen of the infants watched an adult model demonstrate two familiar three-step event sequences and two novel three-step event sequences on simple objects. The other fifteen infants observed a peer model perform the same event sequences on the same objects. Three questions were addressed: (a) Do infants learn to imitate three-step event sequences better from an adult or a peer model? (b) Do infants better recall familiar …

Relationship History And Friendship Development In Adolescence, Jay L. Ringle

Student Work

Adolescents in grades 8, 10, 12, and college (13-22 year olds) completed the Relationship Closeness Inventory (RCI) (Berscheid, Snyder, & Omoto, 1989), a written relationship development narrative, and a graph of major relationship events for a designated friend in a same-sex and cross-sex relationship. Data collection was done in separate sessions for each relationship type, with order of com pletion randomly assigned.

Age and relationship differences were found for total score on the Relationship Closeness Inventory (RCI), indicating that closeness in same-sex relationships increases gradually with age, whereas closeness in cross-sex relationships does not increase until later adolescence. When asked …

Yankees Who Fought For The Maple Leaf: A History Of The American Citizens Who Enlisted Voluntarily And Served With The Canadian Expeditionary Force Before The United States Of America Entered The First World War, 1914-1917, T J. Harris

Student Work

This thesis examines the American citizens who enlisted voluntarily and served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force before the United States entered the First World War. This study provides an overview of the CEF’s recruitment of Americans, the motives and consequences for Americans enlisting in the CEF, the CEF’s five “American” overseas infantry battalions, named the “American Legion,” which were designed to recruit American citizens, and the combat experiences of Americans serving in the CEF on the Western Front from 1914-1917. This thesis was based on the Canadian Department of Militia and Defence’s records of the CEF, Canadian war service records, …

Gender, Ethnicity And Space: The Case Of Racial Ethnic Minority Women Telecommuters In Omaha, Ne, Hope Kawabata

Student Work

Telecommuting is a labor process in which employees work from home on a regular basis, but maintain contact with the office through telecommunications technology such as computer networks, facsimile machines, voice messaging systems, and so on. Telecommuting has become very popular in recent years; however, little is known about its social and spatial impacts. Preliminary research on gender and telecommuting has shown that telecommuting tends to reinforce a traditional division of domestic labor and identification of women with the home; however, whether this is the case for ethnic minority women is unknown. This thesis research used in-depth, semistructured interviews to …

E-Mail And The Flow Of Information In An Organization: An Investigation Within An Academic Institution, Alicia Caldwell

Student Work

The focus of this thesis is e-mail as a tool for the dissemination of information. Literature on e-mail has suggested that e-mail might influence and change communication patterns such as socialization, interdependence, and attention focus. Specifically, this study examined hierarchical similarities/differences in e-mail transmission and reception and user’s perceptions within an academic institution. Variables studied for their effect include the number of messages sent and received, gender, attention a message is given, message subject matter, message origination, whether participants felt that technology inhibits or enhances communication and whether there were differences between hierarchical levels. Among results were the following. For …

The Relationship Between Disengagement Strategies And Reconciliation Strategies, Sarah Holmes

Student Work

This thesis examined the relationship between relational disengagement and reconciliation strategies. The literature review focused on the reasons for disengagement, disengagement theories, disengagement trajectories, disengagement strategies, and reconciliation strategies. The first research question asked if a partner used a direct disengagement strategy, would (s)he use a direct reconciliation strategy? The second research question asked if a partner used an indirect disengagement strategy, would (s)he use an indirect reconciliation strategy? Two hundred undergraduate students were asked to complete a questionnaire containing a hypothetical disengagement scenario and a hypothetical reconciliation scenario. The results indicated a significant, yet, tenuous, relationship between direct/direct strategy …

Pharmaceutical Advertising: A Qualitative Comparison Of The Internet And National Magazines, Broc Bilby

Student Work

The Internet offers tremendous potential benefits to consumers in terms of increased convenience, choices and information. Yet, along with such benefits, comes new risks to consumers, including an increased risk from fraud, deception and misinformation (FDA and the Internet Conference, October, 1996).

Trends In Adult Attachment Styles And Personality Traits Disorders In Adult Male Sex Offenders, Kim Etherton

Student Work

The purpose of this study was to identify trends in attachment styles and personality traits/disorders in adult male sex offenders. Bartholomew’s (1990) four prototypical attachment style model was used in identifying adult attachment relationship styles. Forty-five men from an inpatient sex offender treatment program were given the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ) and the Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ) to measure their style of adult attachment based on Bartholomew ‘s (1990) four theoretical attachment styles. Personality disorders and traits diagnosed through psychological testing upon admission to the hospital were taken from each patients personal record. One hypothesis is used to predict trends in …

Thou Shalt Not Vote: The Struggle For Woman's Suffrage In Nebraska, Laura Mckee Hickman

Student Work

During a constitutional history course, I chose for a research project the passage of Nebraska's woman suffrage law in 1917. As I began to collect sources, however, it quickly came to my attention how few secondary sources existed, and that those sources were quickly becoming outdated. I did find, in that first search, manuscripts in the State Historical Society Archives. As I began to ponder a topic for a thesis, my aborted research provided a starting point to my question: when most western states had passed female suffrage amendments by 1913, including all of Nebraska's neighbors to the north, south, …

A Case Study Of Action Research As Staff Development: Facilitating Teacher Reflection, Deborah M. Walker

Student Work

This ethnographic multi-case descriptive study looked at staff development for teachers in a child-care setting through the use of facilitated action research. The participants in the study chose an area of their practice to concentrate on, and their action research was facilitated by someone with expertise in their field of early childhood. This study examined the processes of reflection the participants underwent as they investigated an area of their practice. Data was collected over a four month period and included journal entries kept by participants, and classroom observations. Further data was collected over the course of the participants' own action …

The Times They Were A-Changing' : A Study Of Popular Protest Songs, 1963-1970, Holly Kingsley Miller

Student Work

The 1960's were very turbulent times in American society. The Vietnam War created battle lines on the home-front between the young and the old, and patriots and the counter culture. During these years, protest songs were evidence of the discontent of American youth. This thesis explored the message content and message structure of popular Vietnam War related protest songs from 1963 - 1970. A sample of sixteen songs were studied through lyrical analysis, structure and style evaluation and an examination of their musical elements. Lyrical analysis revealed that all the sample songs introduced listeners to perceived problems in the status …

Social Commentary In Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction: Seeing The World Through The Eyes Of Marlowe And Millhone., Lisa A. Cook

Student Work

This study examines how the genre of hard-boiled detective fiction has been and continues to be a unique medium for social commentary and an exploration of human nature. The study focuses on two novelist, Raymond Chandler, considered by critics to be the godfather of the genre, and Sue Grafton, a contemporary novelist. I have chosen to research two very different authors of this genre to explain that despite the diversity of the novelist and the age in which they wrote, they both use the techniques of the hard-boiled detective novel to mirror their perception of society. Both authors show that …

The Availability Of Inferences In Children And Young Adults, Gerilyn A. Katz

Student Work

Much of the research on age-related differences in the ability to inhibit irrelevant information in a given task has been on the study of younger and older adults. Only a minimal amount of research has focused on the developmental differences in children and young adults. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether age-related differences exist between children and young adults in processes consistent with inhibition.

Third-, sixth-grade children, and college undergraduates listened to twenty-four garden path passages containing either expected or unexpected, but acceptable, conclusions. The twenty-four passages were divided into four subsets, with each subset containing …

Competitive Issues In The Deregulated United States Railroad Industry, Johannes Christian Koeppe

Student Work

In 1980, the railroad industry was deregulated due to poor industry performance as well as an ideological shift. The newly developed contestable market theory provided the political justification for deregulating what was previously perceived as a natural monopoly. The theme of this study is the examination of whether contestable market conditions exist in the U.S. surface transportation industry which are sufficient to justify giving up direct governmental involvement in the railroad industry. The main generic market structures that play an important role in the regulatory discussion are introduced and implications for regulatory intervention in the case of railroads are drawn. …

The Children's Perception Of Interparental Conflict And Its Relationship To The Psychosocial Adjustment Of Elementary And Junior High Students, Christie Lynn Poe

Student Work

This study examined the relationship between a child’s perception of interparental conflict and a child’s level of self-esteem and social skills. Furthermore, gender and grade differences were analyzed to determine how they play a role in this relationship between interparental conflict and a child’s level of self-esteem and social skills. Self-report questionnaires were administered to 127 5th grade (elementary school) students and 137 6th grade (junior high school) students. Results indicated that a child’s self-report of interparental conflict was significantly and negatively related to the child’s self-report of self-esteem and social skills, even when controlling for the intercorrelations between self-esteemand …

Interpretations And Performance Practices Of Robert Schumann's "Carnaval", Dianne Lawson

Student Work

Carnaval, Op. 9 by Robert Schumann [1810-1856] is a cycle of twenty-two short piano pieces whose titles allude to the European eighteenth-century masquerade and to musicians and persons in Schumann's private life. One of the pieces, entitled "Sphinxes," is actually a notation of three musical codes upon which most of the other pieces are based. In this perspective the pieces may be interpreted as variations on the encoded motifs. The musical codes were derived from letters found both in Schumann's name and in the name of Asch, which was the town in Bohemia where Ernestine von Fricken, Schumann's betrothed for …

Attributions For Spousal Violence, Linda L. Ratcliff

Student Work

The literature on spousal violence suggests that abusive men, their female victims, and others in society often fail to blame abusers for their violent behavior. This failure perpetuates spousal violence because it allows abusers to continue being abusive without being held responsible for their actions. This study analyzed the attributions of male and female university students concerning written scenarios portraying moderate levels of spousal violence to determine whether observers tend to explain the violence using internal or external attributions. Male participants in the study reported a very low tendency, if any, to engage in spousal violence, while the female participants …

Sounding Out The Reading Debate: The Efficacy Of Explicit Phonics Instruction Within A Whole Language Reading Curriculum, Ellen M. Loper

Student Work

Controversy over how to teach reading centers around phonics and whole language and whether phonics should be taught in isolation. Previous studies have compared the two methods rather than combinations of both, and have utilized standardized tests that have questionable usefulness. This study proposed that curriculum based measurement is a more accurate measurement. Reading probes were administered to 38 students in nongraded classrooms. Both classrooms incorporated phonics into whole language curriculums; however, only one classroom used the Spalding method of phonics instruction. A pretest, posttest design was utilized, and gain scores were compared using a t-test. Results indicated a significant …

Taking The Response Cost Out Of The Good Behavior Game, Diane Fletcher Howard

Student Work

The classroom behaviors of remaining seated and seeking permission before speaking were shaped with the use of the original and a revision of the Good Behavior Game. After baseline rates were obtained, the class was divided into two teams. During each three min interval of the revised game, a point was awarded for the non-occurrence of the target behaviors.

This Great Fraternity: Nebraska's Grand Army Of The Republic, 1867-1920, Richard Evans Keyes

Student Work

America’s Civil War transformed the political, economic and social landscape of the nation. Nowhere did this transformation manifest itself so clearly as in the lives of the men who flocked to the Union colors. The world of combat created a landscape of death, dismemberment and disease, while destroying Victorian concepts of knightliness and romance. Veterans spent a lifetime in successfully reintegrating themselves into the nation’s mainstream, while constantly harkening back to the discipline and organizational skills learned in the war. Their efforts came to fruition with the establishment of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1866, which became the …

Illustrating Theories Of Heterosexism And Homophobia: A Case Study Of The Nebraska Department Of Social Services Interim Policy Banning Foster Parenting By Lesbians And Gay Men, Laura F. Lamarr

Student Work

This thesis applies Marxist, feminist, and Marxist-feminist sociological theory to the empirical case of the 1995 Nebraska Department of Social Services Interim Policy prohibiting lesbians and gay men from becoming foster parents in Nebraska. The intent of this thesis is to show how the above theories can provide explanations for the policy and answer the central question of why gay men and lesbians have been the target of this discriminatory policy. The methodology was based on interviews with key persons involved in the policy-making process as well as in constructing the discourse surrounding the entire process. In addition to the …

Connections Of Self-Esteem And Gang Membership, Annette C. Miller

Student Work

Reasons for gang membership have been hypothesized but very little empirical research has been conducted trying to determine why individuals join and remain in delinquent gangs. Low self-esteem has been suggested as a reason for entering into delinquency and joining a gang. Research has shown gang members have lower overall self-esteem than do non-gang individuals (Wang, 1994). An enhancement in this low self-esteem has been suggested as a reason for continuing with gang membership and delinquent behavior. There are mixed results in the research examining the connection of delinquent behavior and increased self-esteem. Kaplan's (1975) self-esteem enhancement theory has not …

Police/Press Relations During Spot News Situations, Roger Hamer

Student Work

Spot news situations may present strain on the communication relationship between police and the press and may actually hamper the flow of information released to the public. If this is the case, what are the causes and reactions that can cause a rift between these two servers of the public good? Some previous studies have examined the prevalence of stress in the daily job performance of both professions, but there is limited available research on how the two may cross over into the other. Through an analysis of the history and emerging policies intended to improve the communication process, field …

Characteristics Of Secondary English Teachers In The Millard Public Schools Who Use Microcomputers, Brian F. Begley

Student Work

The basic concern of this study was to examine the relationships between various personal, educational, and professional characteristics of Millard Public Schools' secondary English teachers and their use of microcomputers in the classroom. The subjects of this study consisted of 75 secondary English teachers in the Millard Public Schools. A questionnaire was created to quantify microcomputer and software usage by these teachers. The questionnaire focused on two areas: various demographics such as teaching experience, educational level, and participation in in-service programs, along with a focus on various types of software used and time spent microcomputers in the classroom. After tabulating …

Group Achievement Tests As Predictors Of Support Services In A Low Socioeconomic And Ethnically Diverse Population, Kristin L. Kruse

Student Work

Students' performance on a group administered test of academic achievement, the California Achievement Test-Fifth Edition (CAT/5) was compared to their participation or nonparticipation in support services beyond the classroom. The sample population was composed of second and fourth graders from various socioeconomic and thnic backgrounds.

Representations Of Unattended Stimuli In Learning Disabled Children: Concrete Or Abstract, Elizabeth J. Carey

Student Work

Studies of repetition priming show that learning disabled (LD) children use more concrete representations of information than non-learning disabled (NLD) children (Brown, Lorsbach, & Carey, 1993; Cermak, 1983). The present study examined whether changes in surface form and spatial location in a negative priming paradigm affect inhibitory processes of LD and NLD children differently.

A Contrast: The Idiomatic Development Of The Cello From The Eighteenth To The Twentieth Centuries As Shown By The Prelude And Saraband Of Johann Sebastian Bach's Suite No. 2 In D Minor For Unaccompanied Cello, Bwy 1008 And Dmitri Shostakovich's Sonata In D Minor For Cello And Piano, Op. 40., Christa A. Speed

Student Work

The idiomatic development of the cello from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries can be traced through its compositions. When Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, BWV 1008, he wrote for a Baroque instrument that was considerably different from cello which had evolved at the time Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Sonata for Violoncello and Piano in D Minor. op. 40 in the twentieth century. The physical modifications to the instrument itself, most notably in the tension, created the timbre and brilliance of the modern cello. The unique qualities of the Suites are explored through the Prelude …

Connections Of Self-Esteem And Gang Membership, Annette C. Miller

Student Work

Reasons for gang membership have been hypothesized but very little empirical research has been conducted trying to determine why individuals join and remain in delinquent gangs. Low self-esteem has been suggested as a reason for entering into delinquency and joining a gang. Research has shown gang members have lower overall self-esteem than do non-gang individuals (Wang,1994). An enhancement in this low self-esteem has been suggested as a reason for continuing with gang membership and delinquent behavior. There are mixed results in the research examining the connection of delinquent behavior and increased self-esteem. Kaplan's (1975) self-esteem enhancement theory has not been …

Quality Of Life Measurements: A Comparison Of Self Rating And Spousal Rating, Leigh Ann Mueller

Student Work

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between self rating and spousal rating of a quality of life questionnaire. This research will be used to determine if a spouse can provide reliable information when a patient suffers from an acquired disability that has an impact on his or her communicative competence. Acquired disabilities such as stroke, dementia or Alzheimer’s disease may require the spouse to make critical treatment choices. The research study consisted of fifteen (15) couples, married for 10 years or longer, selected from the Greater Lincoln District Sertoma Clubs in Lincoln, Nebraska and the Dundee …