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American Trends And American Fears: An Analysis Of The Women's Movement And The Religious Right As Envisioned In Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale, Jennifer Leigh Hodson

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Dental Microwear Analysis Of Averbuch: A Dietary Reconstruction Of A Mississippian Culture, Melissa G. Muendel

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation reconstructs subsistence patterns of the inhabitants of Averbuch, a prehistoric late Mississippian culture, using SEM (scanning electron microscopy) to quantitatively assess the dental microwear of the permanent adult second mandibular molar of a selected skeletal sample from the Averbuch archaeological site. A comparison among the patterns of the Averbuch and those reported from other prehistoric sites in the United States is presented. The study uses the mesiolingual cusp (metaconid) tip facet (Kay and Hiiemae, 1974) of the mandibular permanent second molar to measure dental microwear features. Every cusp in the human mouth has an occlusal relationship to the …

Strategies For Increasing Senior Enrollment And Participation Within The Tennessee 4-H Club Program As Perceived By Administrators, 4-H Club Specialists And 4-H Agents : A Delphi Study, Susan M. Perrin

Masters Theses

The purpose of the study was to identify strategies for change which, if implemented, could be of benefit to the 4-H Club program of The University of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service. Additionally, the study endeavored to describe any perceived differences between the arithmetic mean and standard deviation scores between panel members who were divided into sub-groups as follows: (1) administrators, (2) 4-H club specialists and (3) 4-H agents. Data was obtained through the use of a series of questionnaires using the Delphi Technique with a purposefully selected panel of experts. Mean scores were used to determine the importance of strategies …

Father Role Salience And Socioeconomic Status As Predictors Of Father Involvement, Carol Bruce

Masters Theses

As fathers from socially disadvantaged populations have received little attention in the fathering research, this study attempts to identify the ways in which socioeconomic parameters influence father involvement. In addition, the influence of role salience is explored, in an attempt to identify possible motivational factors which shape the father’s role. The sample consists of 150 residents of Knox County, Tennessee, who are between the ages of 18 and 55 years, and are fathers of children who are 18 years old or younger. African-American fathers, lower-income fathers, and fathers with a high school education or less are represented in proportions which …

The African American Male Student-Athletes' Perceptions Of Their Academic Support Systems From Middle/High School Through Their Collegiate Experience, Kimberly L. Wester

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the African American male student-athlete was properly prepared in middle/high school by their mentors to take their ACT/SAT exams, and to also to find out if they had made a successful transition into intercollegiate life. Subjects were comprised of 24 football athletes and 6 track and field athletes which ranged in age from 18-22. The Pearson Chi Square test, crosstabulations, and the independent t-test were used to determine the statistical data for each survey question. The survey used was developed by the researcher. The Questionnaire consisted of 20 items which respondents …

An Integrated Adventure Recreation Program : The Effects On Attitudes Toward Persons With Disabilities, Leigh Anna Wooley

Masters Theses

"Prejudice (unless deeply rooted in the character structure of the individual) may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals" (Allport, 1954, p. 281). Based on the preceding hypothesis, the problem of this study was to investigate the effects of integration on the attitudes of persons without disabilities toward individuals with disabilities. Utilizing an adventure recreation activity as the vehicle through which equal status contact and common goals were provided, the attitudes of persons without disabilities toward the presence of disabilities were assessed via a pretest/post-test format. Approximately one hundred twenty …

Transnational Social Movements In The Age Of Globalization : The Struggle Against Nafta--And Beyond, Todd Lee Matthews

Masters Theses

The acceleration of the process of globalization has led to the emergence of a new form of response, the transnational social movement. This type of movement involves the citizens of more than one nation working together to seek social change on a issue common to them. Almost no previous empirical research on transnational social movements exists, with more traditional social movements scholarship focusing on nation-state bound movements. This paper describes the case of one organization involved in a transnational social movement against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network (TIRN) became involved early in this …

Procrastination : Development Of A Scale, Steven E. Newell

Masters Theses

Procrastination is a pervasive and recalcitrant problem. It is especially endemic to academic settings. This research reviews the major findings in the research literature and develops a procrastination scale that addresses some of the limitations found in previous self-report measures of procrastination.

Results support the Procrastination Scale's reliability and validity as a measure of procrastination. Also, the results replicate and extend information about the personality characteristics which appear to accompany and possibly facilitate the development of procrastination. These include social anxiety, public self-consciousness, passive-aggressiveness, and (inversely) self-esteem.

The Effects Of Adolescent Employment Upon School, Family, And Adult Values, Belinda June Riddle

Masters Theses

The level of discretionary spending of today's teenager is much greater than that of previous generations. For many, money is earned from part-time employment. As the teenage population continues to be an important segment in the marketplace, it is critical that teens learn to function as rational consumers. While there has been a large volume of quantitative research investigating the impact of part-time employment on adolescent development, there is little qualitative evidence to explain the phenomenon of youth work and in the context of school-year employment. This study examined how adults now perceive the effects of their own school-year employment …

Consumer Complaint Behavior : An Empirical Investigation Of Taxonomy, Influencing Factors, And Consumer Attitudes Towards Retailers & Manufacturers In Complaining Behavior, Ronald Howard Tipper

Masters Theses

In the last ten years the focus of consumer complaint behavior research has shifted from the macro-perspective to a micro-perspective. In the 1970's and 1980's research focused on underlying taxonomies of complaint behavior in an effort to lay a foundation for further studies. In the last ten years these studies have focused on complaint behaviors specific to individual product classes and services. The result is a myriad of factors that influence not only the consumer's propensity to complain, but also which complaining activity he will engage in.

This study was instigated to examine the underlying construct of consumer complaint behavior …

Occupational Work Ethic : A Comparison Of Genders And Two Generations - Baby Boomers & Generation X, Kimberly Turner-Henry

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study is to compare the work ethics of Baby Boomers to Generation X and men to women. Research and analysis of data conducted in this study will provide insight to the following questions:

1. Is age a determinant of work ethic?
2. Do men and women have a different work ethic?

Trust In Family Relationships : The Elderly Person And The Female Family Caregiver, Eileen Marie Amari-Vaught

Doctoral Dissertations

Elderly people and their family caregivers lack a much needed ethical framework for working through moral conflicts. Often, moral conflicts that arise in the home care setting center around the tension between respecting the elderly person's autonomy and protecting the family caregiver from harm. The family caregiver, who is most often female, is vulnerable to harm due to the strains of trying to accomplish the tasks from competing responsibilities to her immediate family, her job and her dependent elderly relatives. Additionally, the female family caregiver often feels tension from the societal pressure to assume this role. There are currently no …

Attachment Style Differences In Negative Affect And Cardiovascular Arousal, Richard Scot Adlin

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored the association between the quality of attachment in close relationships during adulthood and patterns of negative affect. Based on attachment theory and research, it was hypothesized that attachment styles characterized by a negative "working model" of self (preoccupied and fearful avoidant) would be associated greater levels of self-reported negative affect compared with attachment styles defined by positive working models of self (secure and dismissing avoidant). Also, dismissing avoidance was expected to be related to greater cardiovascular activation, in spite of its association with lower levels of self-reported negative affect. A link between security and lower levels of …

A Comparative Study Of Public College And University Presidential Perceptions Of Effective Leadership Practices, Clay Eugene Brown

Doctoral Dissertations

Leadership has evolved through a variety of theories, definitions, and metaphors over the last century. Organizations, such as colleges and universities, have been influential in this leadership evolution. As such, college and university presidents have had significant influence on the phenomenon of leadership. One purpose of this study was to explore variations in public college and university presidential reports of their leadership practices as a function of institutional type and and as a function of the selected personal classification variables of race, age, gender, academic background, and years of experience. A second purpose was to compare public college and university …

Child Mental Health And Other Factors Of Children's Time In State Custody : An Evaluation Of The Protectionist/Satisficing Model Using Event-History Analysis, James William Bailey

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the role that children's mental health status and other factors play in determining the time that children spend in state custody. By combining the protectionist judicial model and Simon's (1956) satisficing view of decision making, a theoretical explanation is offered of the mechanisms that link these factors to time in custody. The study uses prospective data on 700 children in Tennessee state custody to test the effect of certain child, family and service variables on the hazard rate for exiting state custody. To test the study hypotheses an event-history model was constructed using Cox regression analysis with …

Social Support And Health Care Utilization In An Aged Population : A Comparison Of Private Residence And Assisted Living Dwellers In East Tennessee, Mary Jane Tremethick

Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the level of social support in an aged population with deficits in activities of daily living. The social support for the aged residing in assisted living was contrasted with the social support of the aged who remained in a private dwelling and received home health services to assist with activities of daily living. The secondary purpose, was to correlate the level of social support to health care utilization and through the use of Andersen's Behavioral Model, social support was investigated as a predictor of health care utilization. Eighty individuals from each …

The Experiences Of Five Inner-City Interns, Stephen Philippe Rushton

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study, based on a blending of symbolic interactionism and narrative inquiry examined the experiences and perceptions of five women interns as they completed a fifth-year Master's internship in two inner-city schools. The interns gave accounts, both oral and written, of their experiences over the course of a year. The raw data consisted of four personal interviews with each intern (spaced evenly apart over a nine months), twelve written ‘reflections’ by the interns about events they had experienced during the previous week (for a period of three months), and weekly discussion-groups provided by the interns based on their written …

'Þe Bok As I Herde Say' : Orality As A Rhetoric In Medieval And Modern Discursive Contexts, Melissa C. Putnam Sprenkle

Doctoral Dissertations

Rather than viewing orality as a cognitive process or cultural context separate from literacy, this project argues that orality functions as a holistic rhetorical perspective and that there are three distinct orality rhetorics (epic, popular, and conversational) which use the notion of 'voice’ to differently organize the relation between language, culture, and the world. To demonstrate the interpretative differences which result from the application of different orality rhetorics, this study examines and compares oral approaches to textual problems in medieval vernacular narrative poetry (specifically in reference to Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Nibelungenlied). The first …

Images Of The Female Adolescent In Exile In Select Works Of Russian And German Women Writers, Xenia Srebrianski Harwell

Doctoral Dissertations

The image of the adolescent girl in exile has rarely been discussed in Russian and German literary scholarship, but is worthy of investigation as another way of understanding the exile experience, which has been a wide- ranging phenomenon of the twentieth century. The works and their authors–Izol'da by Irina Odoevtseva, Mys bur' by Nina Berberova, Kind aller Länder by Irmgard Keun, and Heimatsuchen by Ilse Tielsch-were selected, in part, because scant research has been devoted to them. Both works and authors are first placed within their historical context and then into the context of literary scholarship within the individual fields …

On-Line Customers : Identifying Store, Product And Consumer Attributes Which Influence Shopping On The Internet, Michelle B. Kunz

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to systematically analyze the influence of store, consumer, and product attributes on adoption of shopping via the Internet. The objectives of this study were to determine why consumers use the Internet as a shopping medium, which consumers were making purchases via the Internet, and what kinds of products they were more likely to purchase via this medium.

Ten retail store characteristics were analyzed, and intent to purchase fifteen product categories via the Internet was investigated. Additionally, consumer demographics and attitudes were included in the analysis models. Factor analysis was used to group products together, …

Indian And Riverboat Casino Patrons : An Analytic Description Of Demographic Characteristics, Expectations, And Items Of Importance, Carl J. Pfaffenberg

Doctoral Dissertations

The rapid growth in Indian and riverboat casino development since 1989 had occurred without any basic knowledge about the patrons of these types of casinos. A study was designed to find the differences and similarities between the patrons of Indian and riverboat casinos related to the following variables: age, sex, race, income, educational level, work status, marital status, number of dependent children, annual frequency of casino play, amount of money budgeted for a casino visit, distance traveled to a casino, first time visitor's, and limit loss established. The patrons of Indian and riverboat casinos also were asked about features they …

Relationship Between Personality Type, Learning Style Preference, And Mathematics Achievement In College Developmental Mathematics, Azar D. Raiszadeh

Doctoral Dissertations

Most community colleges have open-door policies, thus allowing the enrollment of underprepared students. They provide remedial courses to prepare those students for college level mathematics. The primary goal of the remedial and developmental courses is to prepare students to perform as well in their first college level course as the students who do not need a developmental course. In other words, the developmental courses are designed to provide students with the competencies necessary for college work

The increasing demand for remedial and developmental mathematics courses, however, may not necessarily be indicative of students' inability to learn mathematics. It might be …

Metabolic Effects Of Cortisol During Exercise In Humans, Pedro Del Corral Salcedo

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined the physiological effects of an acute reduction in cortisol (C) during exercise in humans. The effects of normal C (NC) were compared to metyrapone-induced low C (LC) on plasma substrate availability and utilization during 2 h of exercise @~60% V0_2max in 5 men and 4 women. The C responses were compared to pre-exercise (PRE) levels and to a rest day (CON). At rest, C was attenuated by- 70% during LC compared to NC, whereas resting plasma glucose (GLU), lactate (LA), glycerol (GLY), hydroxybutyrate (HYD), alanine (AL), branched chain amino acids (BCAA), insulin (I), glucagon (GLG), growth …

Stretching The Boundaries : Space, Gender, And Sentimental Education In Four Novels By British Women 1791-1853, Catherine Bowen Emanuel

Doctoral Dissertations

The separation of home and work spheres during the eighteenth century not only narrowed economic opportunities for women, but it also aided in creating definite gender roles. Mary Wollstonecraft's Wrongs of Woman, Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story, Jane Austen's Emma, and Charlotte Brontë's Villette all challenge the boundaries of gender and limitations of the domestic sphere by using varying degrees of gothic elements and by creating atypical heroines who, with the aid of the males who double them, rewrite gender roles and question the sanctity of male authority within the home. By inscribing various spaces with meaning, these authors also …

The Problematics Of Gender Specificity In Sarraute's Enfance, Yourcenar's Quoi? L'Eérniteℓ́And Desvignes's Le Grain Du Chanvre Ou L'Histoire De Jeanne, Brenda Young Ferrell

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the problematics of gender specificity in three twentieth-century French women writers' works in which there is a strong female protagonist. These works are Nathalie Sarraute's Enfance, Marguerite Yourcenar's Quoi? L'éternité, and Lucette Desvignes's Le Grain du chanvre ou l'histoire de Jeanne. This study is divided into two parts. Part One is comprised of two chapters, and Part Two of five. The first chapter of Part One deals with the theory of a specific women's writing and is subdivided into three parts: woman as reader, woman as writer, and woman as autobiographer. The second chapter …

Examination Of Select Factors Contributing To Performance On Hip Joint Range-Of-Motion Tests, Kelly Rebecca Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations

Thirty-five subjects (15 men and 20 women) volunteered to participate in this study. Volunteers were tested on the PSLR, AKET, SRT, and TSRT, tests were administered in a counterbalanced order. Three warm-up trials were administered prior to data collection on each test. Measurements were made on the right side of the body; three trials were recorded for analysis. Eight subjects agreed to return on a second day to be retested in order to look at test-retest reliability from one test session to the next. Technical problems with PSLR administration. necessitated dropping this test as the criterion measure and using the …

Evaluating The Influence Of Process Variables On Participants' Satisfaction With A Marital Enrichment Program, Catherine Allison Cooper

Masters Theses

Data were collected from 71 couples (n=142) participating in the Building and Enriching Stronger Tennessee (B.E.S.T.) Families marital enrichment program. At the conclusion of the seminar, participants completed a survey that asked them to indicate their level of agreement on items assessing various aspects of Katz’s (1988) and Crane’s (1993) marketing models (Product, Place, Price, and People). Additionally, couples were asked to rate their overall satisfaction with the workshop experience. The purpose of this study was to examine the relative influence of participants’ attitudes regarding product (i.e., manual/visual aids), place (i.e., seating/lighting, chair comfort), price (i.e., workshop fee), and people …

An Analysis Of The Differential Impact The Camp Koinonia Experience Had On University Of Tennessee Students Who Served As Counselors And Activity Staff : 1995-1997, Melissa Ann Edwards

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to analyze the perceived impact persons with multiple disabilities had on university students who served as camp counselors and activity staff at Camp Koinonia during the camp sessions of 1995, 1996, and 1997. A total of 348 student final papers were analyzed in this study which addressed question number six, ‘Describe the experience which happened during the week of camp that had the most impact on you.” Six hypotheses were investigated to determine similarities or differences between the following; (1)1995 and 1996 camp programs; (2) 1995 and 1997 camp programs; (3) 1996 and 1997 …

Technostress In The Reference Environment : A Survey Of U.S. Association Of Research Libraries Academic Reference Librarians, Lisa A. Ennis

Masters Theses

This study uses a Likert type scale to examine Technostress and the attitudes of academic ARL reference librarians. A Likert survey with twenty items allowing the participants to respond, strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree was sent to 97 ARL academic libraries in the United States. The librarians could either return the survey through the postal service or via e-mail. The total population consisted of all academic ARL reference librarians in the United States, about 2,000 librarians total. Of the 2,000 librarians 158 responded. The results demonstrate that even though technology creates a large amount of stress, librarians …

A Study Of Opinions On Free Expression And Use Of Personal Computers By Tennessee Attorneys And Newspaper Journalists, Richard Barton Goins

Masters Theses

Attorneys and newspaper journalists, through the practice of their professions, have been perceived historically to share similar beliefs concerning free expression and freedom of the press. This research first examined the self-described views of Tennessee attorneys and newspaper journalists on free expression and the freedom of the press. It also surveyed their use of personal computers and the Internet. Two hundred and thirteen attorneys and newspaper journalists from the state of Tennessee participated in a mail survey over a six-week period. Their responses form a baseline for discussion on free expression, freedom of the press and personal computer use by …