Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Radar - A Novel Admission Control And Handoff Management Scheme For Multimedia Leo Satellite Networks, Syed Rashidali Rizvi

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks are deployed as an enhancement to terrestrial wireless networks in order to provide broadband services to users regardless of their location. In addition to global coverage, these satellite systems support communications with hand-held devices and offer low cost-per-minute access cost, making them promising platforms for Personal Communication Services (PCS). LEO satellites are expected to support multimedia traffic and to provide their users with some form of Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees. However, the limited bandwidth of the satellite channel, satellite rotation around the Earth and mobility of end-users makes QoS provisioning and mobility management …

Boys Will Be Boys: A Social Control Approach To Assessment Of Gender-Based Sentencing Disparity In Norfolk Circuit Court Cases, Fay F. Spence

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

This study evaluated the relationship between gender and sentencing severity for defendants convicted of violent crimes, victimless crimes, and theft crimes in Norfolk Circuit Court during 2001 and 2002. Based upon social control theories, the author hypothesized that women receive harsher penalties than men for violent crimes and victimless crimes, but that men receive harsher penalties for theft crimes. To test these hypotheses, the author relied, in part, upon data collected by the Norfolk Commonwealth Attorney's office on 3368 criminal cases filed in 2001 and concluded by May 22, 2002. After eliminating cases not pertinent to the study, the data …

'Outside Agitators:' The Role Of Foreign Islamists In The Chechen Fight For Independence, Robert Kent Pinkerton Jr.

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to identify the role of foreign Islamist charities and terrorist groups in the current conflict in Chechnya. The issue of foreign Islamism in Chechnya is introduced through a general history of the region, including the role of religion in both traditional Chechen culture and in the present war. The evolution of Chechen war from a secular to a religious conflict is first examined by looking into the perspectives of various Muslim groups on the Chechen war and other similar conflicts and, conversely, the perspectives of many Chechens on the outsiders who purport to aid …

The Impact Of Trade Liberalization On Growth, Unemployment, And Poverty In Bangladesh, Maha Z. Mirza

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Trade liberalization has been one of the major policy components of the governments of the developing countries in the recent decades. Bangladesh as many other developing nations, has adopted different measures of trade reform policies as an element of International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), as well as to be an integral part of the world wide trend of globalization. Such policy measures include the reduction/rationalization of tariff rate, simplification of import and export trade procedures, relaxation of restrictive trade policies, and reform of financial and monetary policies. Even though, the trade reform measures were anticipated to increase …

The Effects Of Local And Global Risk Factors On Industry Stock Returns: Across Country Analysis, Mahdy Farag Elhossiny

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This dissertation studies the local and global sources of risk and industries stock returns across national equity markets. We examine several local and global economic risk factors and ask whether and to what extent these risk factors can explain the variation in the industries' stock returns of five countries, namely Canada, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. Specifically, the main objective of this dissertation is to find answers for three main questions: First, whether and to what extent do returns on local industries respond to changes in local macroeconomic risk factors? Second, whether and to what extent do returns …

The Determinants Of Academic Performance Of African American Males, Marvin K. Hall

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

In this research on the academic performance of African American males I used data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study: Base Year 1988 to examine the factors that effect academic performance of one small group, the African American male. Independent variables that were used were SES, self-efficacy, self-esteem, two cultural variables, marital status of parents, and discipline. After controlling for SES two variables were related to GPA. The higher the self-efficacy of African American males the higher their GPA and the more discipline problems they had the lower their GPA. Results of this research identify the need to address cultural …

Corporal Punishment And Its Relation To Race, Psychological Well-Being, And Parental Relationship, Michelle P. Kravitz

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Previous research has documented the numerous negative effects associated with corporal punishment (Gershoff, 2002). The present study examined whether experiencing corporal punishment as a child is related to one's perception of the legitimacy of corporal punishment, race, the nature of the parent-child relationship (i.e., biological parent versus step-parent), and psychological well-being. Compared to college students who did not experience corporal punishment during childhood, college students who experienced higher levels of corporal punishment are expected to report that corporal punishment is a more acceptable form of discipline. College students who grew up with a stepfather were expected to be more likely …

What Is Positive Disclosure And To Whom Do We Disclose? The Role Of Topics, Gender And Type Of Relationship In Positive Self-Disclosure, Elizabeth Landers Ford

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study examined what topics (including experiences, feelings, and thoughts) people define as positive self-disclosure. The study also looked at reasons people generate for self-disclosing versus not disclosing something positive. Male and female students spontaneously described a past experience or feeling they perceive to be personal and positive. They then indicated whether or not they disclosed about these experiences or feelings to their father, mother, same-sex friend, and a past or present significant other/spouse. These descriptions were coded into one of eight categories: Religion, Family Development, Friendship, Sex, Romance, Self-Confidence, Achievement, and Helping Behavior, plus a Miscellaneous category. There were …

Pursuit Of Professionalism In Bureaucracy: Perceptions About Bureaucratic Values Of Civil Service Employees In The Ethnic Federalism Of Ethiopia, Mary Elizabeth Vogel

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

In the 1980s an array of world events including the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a movement toward restructuring and downsizing government bureaucracies, and rapidly evolving technology prompted significant changes to governments. Many developing nations began the transition from command to market economies, and new government structures emerged to address a variety of root problems including the rise of ethnic consciousness and conflict. As a consequence of these events, changes in societies, governments, and bureaucracies, were drivers for changes to bureaucratic values.

The current research addresses a gap in knowledge about bureaucratic values specifically in a government organized under the …

Grand Strategy Analysis: A Proto-Theoretical Approach, Patrick Magee

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

International relations scholarship begins and ends with assumptions—about human nature; about human interaction; about starting points, relative information, and outcomes. Such assumptions are necessary to further the intellectual coherence and development of scholarly work. However, they restrict the applicability of scholarly research to those situations that parallel the work's underlying assumptions.

This work argues the body of international relations scholarship as a whole would benefit from the development of a pre-theory state, absent any assumptions about international relations, from which observers can identify those works of scholarship that are most effective in explaining perceptive states and the strategic decisions taken …

The Role Of Inferential Accuracy In Performance Rating Accuracy: A Field Study Of Teacher Performance Appraisal, Cynthia L. Cooper

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Management

This study first assessed the accuracy of performance appraisal ratings of high school teachers in comparison to the achievement of their students as measured by Virginia's Standard of Learning (SOL) tests. The overall performance rating scores of 145 teachers were compared to the pass rates of their students on SOL end-of-course tests. The rating sub-scores in each of four domains of performance were also compared to the SOL pass rates.

The study then tested the influence of Inferential Accuracy, a model proposed by Jackson (1972), on rating accuracy overall and of individual raters in the study. Inferential Accuracy is comprised …

Citizen's Satisfaction With The Police, Kim Barshanet Baskerville

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research project is to examine three competing models of citizen satisfaction with the police: 1) citizen characteristics, 2) citizen experience with the police, and 3) citizen quality of life issues. Data were taken from Criminal Victimization and Perceptions of Community Safety in 12 Cities, 1998. The relationship between citizen satisfaction and the three models were tested by examining different types of contact between police and citizens, race, age, gender, and quality of life, which was measured by satisfaction with neighborhood and satisfaction with city. In addition, an item labeled disorder, which takes into consideration acts of …

Differential Police Treatment Of Domestic And Nondomestic Assaults, Gina Michelle Sajko

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The current study examines the effects of type of assault and victim gender on police response. Victim accounts of domestic and nondomestic assaults in the San Diego region were examined. This study found that domestic assaults were significantly less likely to result in arrest than nondomestic assaults. Female victims of domestic assaults were more likely to receive police referrals to outside agencies. Assaults with victim injury were more likely to result in arrest for domestic assaults, and within the sample as a whole. The gender of the victim had no effect on arrest.

Hiv/Aids And Condom Usage: Factors That Contribute To African American Women's Vulnerability To Hiv Infection, Monica P. Washington

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

HIV/AIDS poses an enormous health threat to African Americans, specifically African American women. According to the Center for Disease Control "1 in 160 African American women are believed to be infected with HIV (Center for Disease Control 1999:1). In 2000, although African American women only represented 12% of the female population, they accounted for 64% of HIV cases reported among women (The White House 2000; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases 2004).

This study examined HIV/AIDS and African American women and attempted to answer the question: Why are African American women not consistently using condoms to protect themselves against …

Comparing Domestic Assaults In Military And Non-Military Populations: A Test Of Social Learning Theory, Crystal S. Carey

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

This study examined factors relating to the severity of domestic assaults in military and non-military populations by examining a sample of 599 clients admitted to battered women's shelters over a 22-month period. This study addressed the following question: What differences, if any, exist between the severity of domestic assaults committed by military and non-military offenders, and what explains those differences?

The following factors as they may relate to severity of domestic assault are measured: batterer race, batterer income, victim income, batterer military status, and weapon involvement. Analyses reveal no significant differences in injury severity between assaults perpetrated by military and …

Factors Predicting Teacher Satisfaction And Retention In The Hampton City Schools Teacher Induction Program, Gale A. Lee

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

This descriptive and correlational study used a mixed methodology of both quantitative and qualitative data collection strategies to identify factors that predict new teacher satisfaction and retention in the Hampton City Schools' teacher induction program. In the first phase of the study, a researcher-developed questionnaire was mailed to 657 Hampton City Schools' elementary, middle, and high school teachers with 0–5 years of experience and was returned by 40 percent (n = 226) of the sample. The first phase of the study utilized a 31-item teacher questionnaire. The first section of this questionnaire requested demographic information, which helped to categorize teachers …

Quantifying Vulnerability To Critical Infrastructure, Barry Charles Ezell

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Military and civilian leaders have the responsibility to protect our Nation's critical infrastructure, communities, and symbols of American power from terrorists, home and abroad, as well as from natural disasters. To this end, assessments are conducted to reduce vulnerability. The literature offers multiple definitions of vulnerability and measurement has not been adequately addressed. Thus, the purpose of this research has been to develop and deploy a systems-based model that quantifies vulnerability to critical infrastructure. This research defines critical infrastructure vulnerability as a measure of the susceptibility of critical infrastructure to threat scenarios. Vulnerability is a function of (1) threat scenario, …

The Link Between Corporal Punishment And Teen Pregnancy, Jennifer M. Hagberg

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

This study explored the relationship between corporal punishment and teen pregnancy among women participating in the 2000 survey round of the NLSY Child and Young Adult Surveys. Zero order correlations were used to examine the bivariate relationship between the corporal punishment and teen pregnancy. OLS regression was used to determine if a direct relationship exists between corporal punishment and teen pregnancy after controlling for a host of variables. It was hypothesized that the more frequently a respondent received corporal punishment, the more likely she was to have reported a pregnancy during adolescence, and that this relationship would manifest itself primarily …

An Examination Into The Effects Of Social Positioning And Capitalist Immersion On Gendered Attitudes Towards Homosexuality In The United States, Fiona J. Blee

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Previous research on attitudes towards homosexuality has concentrated on characteristics of individuals, and neglected the capitalist structure of society that provides the contextual setting for the creation and maintenance of cultural attitudes.

This thesis uses responses collected in the general social survey of the United States between 1993 and 1998, to provide a more comprehensive explanation of differences in attitudes towards homosexuality, through an analysis of social position and the capitalist agenda. The analysis revealed significant relationships between sex, age, race, income, beliefs regarding the domestication of women, and attitudes towards homosexuality.

The analysis showed that respondents categorized as black …

The Effects Of Parcels And Latent Variable Scores On The Detection Of Interactions In Structural Equation Modeling, Thomas D. Fletcher

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Numerous theories in the behavioral and organizational sciences involve the regression of an outcome variable on component terms and their product to evaluate interaction effects. There are numerous statistical difficulties with this multiple regression approach. The most serious is measurement error, requiring the use of structural equation modeling. Jöreskog and Yang (1996) described a nonlinear structural equation modeling procedure that incorporates mean structures in the covariance analysis. They demonstrated that only one indicator for the product term is necessary for model identification. Unfortunately, the Jöreskog-Yang procedure leads to biased estimates of the product coefficient. In this dissertation, I propose that …

Socioeconomic Attainments Of Africans Versus African-Americans In The United States, Azeb Berhane

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Using data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) of the 2000 U.S. census, the socioeconomic attainments of African immigrants was compared to African Americans in the United States. This comparison was made within the context of assimilation perspective, human capital perspective, and the family investment model. Consistent with previous research findings, the current study found that African immigrants have higher educational attainments than African-Americans in the United States. However, when breaking down the African group by country of birth, African-Americans were found to have higher educational attainments than a few African countries. Generally, the results reveal that African …

The Application Of A System Of Systems Analysis To Assessments Of National Power, George T. Hodermarsky

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation proposes an approach and methodology for the utilization of the fundamentals of systems theory as an aid to national security decision-making. At its core is an examination of the elements of nations' or non-state actor's power resources. The product of the analysis is the compilation of a set of nodes, and the relationships between these, upon which actions may be taken to achieve desired effects. Since the boundaries between the subsystems of power resources are flexible and permeable, and there will be interactions between elements in different subsystems, a system of systems approach is essential so that the …

Telecommunications Technology And Sovereignty: Effects On States As Information Transfer Increased From The Speed Of Oxcart To The Speed Of Light, James H. Radford

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Sovereignty---the absolute and unlimited power of the state---provides independence of action. Information about actions or intentions of competitors, enemies, or even friends, arriving after extended periods of time, resulted in responses to fait accompli. When information travels nearly instantaneously, states must consider potentially rapid international reactions before the fact. This suggests that since a state's freedom of action has been abridged, the nature of their sovereignty has altered.

This study pursues the research question: In what ways does telecommunications technology affect state sovereignty? The evolution of sovereignty is compared to development of telecommunications technology over four distinct eras, each …

Effect Of Instructional Styles And The Duration Of Class Time On The Sense Of Classroom Community Of Military Urban Graduate Students, William J. Davis Jr.

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

This study measured the effect that instructional style, duration of class time, and repeated administrations of the Classroom Community Scale (CCS) had on the sense of classroom community of military urban graduate students (N = 263). The Instructional Styles Inventory (ISI) was used to determine instructional style, and the CCS was utilized to measure sense of classroom community. In addition, this research contained qualitative data that were extracted from a random sampling of participants during small focus groups.

Quantitative analysis of the data showed that duration of class time and instructional style had an effect on sense of classroom …

Multi-National Project Team Communications And Cultural Influences, Morgan E. Henrie

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This exploratory case study dissertation examined multinational project teams' communication satisfaction as influenced by the project team's cultural attribute of power distance. Utilizing a exploratory case study, semi-guided interview research approach, ordinal scale data and open-ended contextual based question responses was obtained. This data was gathered from United States---Russia and Canada---Angola multi-national, complex, high technology oil transportation project teams. Triangulation data gathering techniques were utilized to obtain empirical data from multiple sources of data and multiple data types. Subsequent data analyses combined descriptive statistical analysis, graphical analysis, cluster analysis, and content analysis techniques to derive a theoretical construct of multi-national …