Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Successes And Challenges Among Community Technology Programs In Illinois, Center For Urban Research And Learning, Amy Kerr, Tanya Kellam, Aparna Sharma

Center for Urban Research and Learning: Publications and Other Works

The Illinois Community Technology Fund (ICTF) came about through the SBC/Ameritech merger that set aside $1.5 million in 2000 to provide advanced telecommunications services and skills necessary to improve the quality of live for low-income and rural Illinois populations through organizational grants. This is an evaluation report of a multiple organization community technology project funded by the Illinois Community Technology Fund. These funds were distributed in 2001 and 2002 grant rounds to prepare citizens to live and work in a growing technological society. A wide variety of organizations including community based organizations, community colleges, and schools were given a maximum …

Mine Risk Education In Jordan: A Preliminary Needs And Capacities Assessment, Gichd

Global CWD Repository

At the request of the National Committee for Demining and Rehabilitation (NCDR), the GICHD conducted a mission to Jordan in October 2005 to undertake a preliminary national needs and capacities assessment for mine risk education (MRE). It is intended that this preliminary assessment will form the basis for decisions within the NCDR and its partners about future MRE programming in the country.

Collaboration, Anita Coleman

Faculty Publications

This is a presentation (15) slides at the 2005 ASIS&T Annual Meeting, Charlotte, N.C. on October 31, session on Collaboration in Digital Libraries: Luminous Ideas from Health Informatics, Academic Libraries, and Historical Archives

Development And Evaluation Of An Interactive Multimedia Clinical Skills Teaching Program Designed For The Pediatric Clerkship., Anthony J. Frisby, Lindsey Lane, Anna M. Carr, Ellen Ross, Ruth P. Gottlieb

Academic Commons and Scott Memorial Library Staff Papers and Presentations

Background and Purpose: The physical examination section of a multimedia program developed to teach infant history and physical examination skills was evaluated.

Methods: 71 students participated: one group viewed only the physical examination section (PX), one the history section (HX), one none of the program (CX). Physical examination skills were assessed by direct observation of medical students performing an abdominal exam and scored using a checklist at baseline, immediately after intervention and at the end of the pediatric clerkship. Results were analyzed using ANOVA with repeated measures.

Results: Baseline scores were: PX 2.5; HX 2.8. The PX group scored significantly …

Brief 19: The Dean’S Role In Faculty Evaluation, New England Resource Center For Higher Education, University Of Massachusetts Boston

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

Faculty work continues to change in response to the increased emphases on diversity requirements in undergraduate education, partnerships between academic and student affairs, and computer technology (O’Meara, et al, 2003). As even more is learned about strategies for the educational success of their students, faculty will be counted on to tailor their skills and pedagogies to new populations of students. At the same time, colleges and universities must keep pace with these changes by ensuring that expectations about faculty work are clearly defined and are reflected in evaluation and reward structures—and that faculty are supported in their efforts. The quality …

Evaluation And Perceived Impacts Of The North-Central Region Sare Grants, 1988-2002, Shirley K. Trout, Charles A. Francis, John E. Barbuto Jr.

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

Evaluation of government-funded programs is essential to identify ways in which initial funding makes an impact and programs can improve. The purpose of this study was to understand the value of the North Central Region's Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education (SARE) grants operated through the United States Department of Agriculture, from their inception through 2002. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, impacts were explored from the perspective of former grant recipients. Survey data were collected from 171 former SARE and 33 interviews conducted with grant recipients who represented three different grant "families"--researchers, producers and educators. Descriptive, comparative, and exploratory analyses …

Evaluating Deliberative Democracy : Comparing Habermas' Discourse Ethic And Evaluations Of Consensus Process In Residential Cooperatives, Katheryn Sutter

Dissertations and Theses

How do deliberators reason together on what is best? Planners, policy analysts and community developers should know how to recognize the validity of participatory deliberations claimed to give groups voice in policy decisions. Policy analyses have lost power in the face of postmodern critiques of objectivity. Practical policy analyses require more than objective validity for they express results of what Jürgen Habermas refers to as normative rationality. This study followed John Forester's recommended research agenda for rigorous empirical analyses of policy process deliberations using Jürgen Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action. Three successful residential communities were identified with organizational and institutional …

Information Technology, Cognition, And Communication, Anita Coleman

Faculty Publications

This is a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation of about 27 slides used in conjunction with a talk at UCI-CRITO on 18 May 2005, and the research reported is from a previously published study of mine. Information technology is varied and human use and impact can be examined at different levels. I report on a study that examines the ubiquitous hyperlinks as instruments of cognition in e-learning.

The Communication Studies Researcher And The Communication Studies Indexes, David C. Tyler, Signe Swanson, Susan M. Leach

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The existence of widely available large, multi-subject, online databases calls into question the necessity for small, discipline-specific indexes to support research. This study attempts to determine whether the online Communication Studies indexes provide access to the journal literature that researchers in the field actually cite and whether, where the current journal literature is concerned, that access is in any way superior to that provided by large, multi-subject, online indexes.

Operational Evaluation Test Report On Beaver Micro-Vegetation Cutter, Institute For Defense Analysis, U.S. Humanitarian Demining Research And Development, Office Of The Assistant Secretary Of Defense Special Operations And Low-Intensity Conflict

Global CWD Repository

The Micro-Vegetation Cutter (MVC) system was tested in the late summer and early fall of 2004 at a U.S. Army Countermine development site in central Virginia. The MVC project was funded by the U.S. Army’s Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD), Countermine Division, Humanitarian Demining (HD) Research and Development Office located at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. The MVC system, consisting of a remote-controlled vegetation cutter vehicle and a command vehicle, is the product of the project engineer, Mr. J. Michael Collins. Mr. Collins was responsible for the concept, its design, and directed the MVC’s fabrication. All work was performed in …

Research Implications In The Prevention Of Child Abuse And Neglect, Jeanette Harder

Social Work Faculty Publications

Child abuse and neglect is a problem of vast proportions. Research on the effectiveness of child abuse and neglect prevention programs is critical for the provision of effective and efficient services. This paper provides a critical analysis of the research methodologies on child abuse and neglect prevention programs at the secondary and tertiary levels, as represented in the empirical literature. The paper begins by outlining the levels of prevention, and by describing child abuse and neglect prevention programs, as published in the empirical literature. This paper then goes on to describe and analyze the research conducted on these programs, to …

Prevention Of Child Abuse And Neglect: An Evaluation Of A Home Visitation Parent Aide Program Using Recidivism Data, Jeanette Harder

Social Work Faculty Publications

Objective: The purpose of this research was to examine the secondary and tertiary prevention of child abuse and neglect through an evaluation of the Parent Aide program at the Child Abuse Prevention Center in Dallas, Texas. Method: Using a quasi-experimental, retrospective research design, this project compared abuse recidivism rates for those parents who completed, dropped out, or refused to participate in a home visitation child abuse prevention program. Results: Parents who completed the Parent Aide program had fewer subsequent, substantiated reports to Child Protective Services (CPS) of child abuse or neglect than those parents who refused to participate or dropped …

The Psychologist, The Philosopher, And The Librarian The Information Literacy Version Of Critic, Brad S. Matthies

Scholarship and Professional Work

The information-literacy version of CRITIC expands upon Wayne R. Bartz's development of that acronym. This step-by-step method for introductory critical thinking is reinforced by an exercise inspired by Bertrand Russell.

‘Empowering Europe’S Citizens’? Towards A Charter For Services Of General Interest, Judith Clifton, Daniel Díaz-Fuentes, Francisco Comín

Judith Clifton

This article analyses the development of the European Union (EU) project of a Charter for Services of General Interest (SGI) from the mid-1990s to the publication of the White Paper on Services of General Interest and the draft European Constitution in 2004. Though service charters are often associated with New Public Management (NPM) reforms related to privatization, they are also an integral part of the process of EU institution building, and need to be understood alongside developments such as the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Using a four-stage model of international NPM convergence analysis four phases of the Charter for SGI …

Testing The Barriers To Digital Libraries: A Study Seeking Copyright Permission To Digitize Published Works, Carole A. George

Carole A. George

Purpose: The aim was to explore the issues related to acquiring copyright permission with the goal of determining effectiveness and efficiency using the least complex process. Methodology: A random sample of books was chosen, relevant information was recorded, request letters were sent and tracked, and results (permission received or denied) were analyzed with respect to publisher, publication data, time required, and issues related to the process. Findings: About 52 percent responded with a yes or no with 24 percent Yes responses. Nearly 25 percent never responded, addresses were not found for about 16 percent, approximately 7 percent were too complicated …

Hands-On Nlp For An Interdisciplinary Audience, Elizabeth D. Liddy, Nancy Mccracken

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The need for a single NLP offering for a diverse mix of graduate students (including computer scientists, information scientists, and linguists) has motivated us to develop a course that provides students with a breadth of understanding of the scope of real world applications, as well as depth of knowledge of the computational techniques on which to build in later experiences. We describe the three hands-on tasks for the course that have proven successful, namely: 1) in-class group simulations of computational processes; 2) team posters and public presentations on state-of-the-art commercial NLP applications, and; 3) team projects implementing various levels of …

The Evaluation Of Latent Semantic Indexing In Persian Text Retrieval, Farhad Oroumchian, H. Bashiri, M. Rohani, A. Moeini

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

An Evaluation Of A Life-Coaching Group Program: Initial Findings From A Waitlist Control Study, Suzy Green, Lindsay G. Oades, Anthony M Grant

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Life coaching has grown substantially in the last few years and received considerable media coverage worldwide (Rock, 2001). However, there have been few empirical investigations into its efficacy (Grant, 2003). The study outlined in this chapter aims to add to this limited empirical base.

Evaluation Of Concept Lattices In A Web-Based Mail Browser, Shaun Domingo, Peter W. Eklund

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Concept lattices assist human understanding in three ways: firstly, by collecting formal concepts that contain maximal sets of objects with shared attributes; secondly, the relatedness of concepts is revealed by providing a hierarchy of formal concepts in the information space. Finally, the concept lattice (drawn as a line diagram) reveals inferences that can automatically derive association rules. Therefore, a major hypothesis of the application of concept lattices is that they visually assist in understanding the structure of information contained within an information space. However, there has been little in the way of empirical tests to substantiate this hypothesis. This paper …

Corporate Social Responsibility (Csr): An Examination Of Consumer Awareness, Evaluation And Purchase Action, Alan A. Pomering

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Despite marketplace polls reporting heightened consumer interest in and support for companies acting in socially-responsible ways, there remains to date little evidence of such consumer support translating into general purchase behaviour. There is a gap in our knowledge regarding which particular socially-responsible behaviours are likely to prove most influential with consumers and be rewarded with supportive purchase behaviour, and how awareness of firms’ commitments to these behaviours is to be brought to consumers’ attention. It appears from the marketplace success of some socially-responsible, or ‘ethical’ brands, such as The Body Shop and recently launched clothing brands such as American Apparel …

Monitoring And Evaluation Of The Effective Implementation Of The Foundation Phase (Meeifp) Project Across Wales, Iram Siraj-Blatchford, Kathy Sylva, Janet Laugharne, Emmajane Milton, Frances Charles

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The Foundation Phase (FP) is a Welsh Assembly Government, national reform covering the combined 3-5 Early Years and Key Stage 1 provision (children aged between three and seven). In September 2004, the first stage of the pilot commenced in 41 pilot settings across the 22 local authorities in Wales for 3-5 year olds only. The 41 pilot settings will continue in 2005-2006 with Year 1 children (and some Year 2 children where mixed classes are operating) coming on board in the maintained sector and similarly Year 2 in 2006-2007.

The Foundation Phase proposes a continuum of learning for children from …

Structure Of The Early Palaeozoic Cape River Metamorphics, Tasmanides Of North Queensland: Evaluation Of The Roles Of Convergent And Extensional Tectonics, Christopher L. Fergusson, R A Henderson, K. J. Lewthwaite, D. Phillips, I. W. Withnall

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

The Early Palaeozoic Cape River Metamorphics consist mainly of psammitic gneiss and schist and occur as an extensive linear belt at the western margin of the Charters Towers Province 200 km southwest of Townsville in the northern Tasmanides. A prominent foliation (S₂) is the main structure in the belt and is associated with tight to isoclinal folds, subparallel mineral and intersection lineations, and boudinaged pods of vein quartz and pegmatite. In the southwest, the main foliation is a crenulation cleavage (S₂) related to D₂ deformation. It overprints steeply dipping foliation (S₁) formed in …

Machine Learning Techniques And Use Of Event Information For Stock Market Prediction: A Survey And Evaluation, Paul D. Yoo, Maria H. Kim, Tony Jan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper surveys machine learning techniques for stock market prediction. The prediction of stock markets is regarded as a challenging task of financial time series prediction. In this paper, we present recent developments in stock market prediction models, and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. In addition, we investigate various global events and their issues on predicting stock markets. From this survey, we found that incorporating event information with prediction model plays very important roles for more accurate prediction. Hence, an accurate event weighting method and a stable automated event extraction system are required to provide better performance in financial time …

The Needs Of Informal Grandparent Caregivers And How They Are Met At The Kinship Family Center, Emily Jane Osborne-Lewis, Shanta Lashawn Clardy

Theses Digitization Project

Seventeen grandparent caregivers, who have primary responsibility for one or more grandchildren and do not have a parent of the grandchildren living in the household, were interviewed to evaluate the effectiveness of the services offered by Kinship Family Center (KFC), a non-profit support agency for relative caregivers and the children in their care. Kinship Family Center is a program of the Central City Lutheran Mission and is funded by the San Bernardino County Department of Children's Services. The researchers found that KFC was an effective asset for informal grandparent caregivers. For grandparents, it was a source of support and comfort …

Integrated Technologies, Innovative Learning (Vol. Ii), Steve Rhine, Mark Bailey, Neal Grandgenett, Nebraska Department Of Education

Faculty Books and Monographs

Chapter 8: Midwestern Independence and Educational Technology Use: Evaluation Strategies of the Nebraska Catalyst Project, co-authored by Neal Grandgenett, UNO faculty member.

This chapter discusses the efforts of the Nebraska Catalyst Project and its collaborative evaluation process for monitoring progress of the integration of educational technology use into pre-service teacher education in the state. Nebraska is a very independent operational environment for educational institutions, which includes 535 K12 school districts, and 17 institutions of higher education accrediting Nebraska teachers. Such institutional independence meant that the higher education institutions and K12 school districts, although individually quite excellent, had limited experience in …

An Examination Of The Mentoring Process: A Study Of The Interaction Between Mentor And Mentee In The Context Of An Adolescent Mentor Program, Christopher K. Konrad

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The purpose of this study is to explore the mentoring process, specifically the interactions between mentor and mentee in the context of an adolescent mentor program. The data was gathered through in depth interviews with two mentors and feedback sessions from nineteen mentee participants who were involved in a group mentoring program for young people aged 14-16 years. Several adolescent programs, conducted at local high schools, were included in the study. A qualitative methodology of constructivist hermeneutics was utilised to examine the data and link it to the literature related to the study question. The findings indicated that what occurs …

Rehabilitating The Importance Of The Non-Cognitive: An Interview With MichèLe Lamont, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

In spring of 2006, Michèle Lamont, Professor of Sociology and African and African-American Studies at Harvard University, was invited to give a lecture for the New Sociological Imagination Lecture Series, organized by the New School for Social Research. This lecture concerned her book Cream Rising: How Peer Review Finds and Defines Excellence in the Social Sciences and the Humanities, which is to be published by Harvard University Press in 2008. Drawing on 81 interviews with panelists serving on five multidisciplinary fellowship competitions in the social sciences and the humanities, the book analyzes (1) the meaning panelists give to academic excellence—including …

Values And Goal-Free Evaluation: A Case Study, Brandon Youker

Brandon W. Youker Ph.D

How does a goal-free evaluator deal with values? Which values? Whose values? This presentation argues that the goal-free evaluator takes a consumerist perspective. Thus the evaluator's values are in serving the program's consumers and satisfying the consumers' needs.

International Association For Impact Assessment, Brandon W. Youker Ph.D

Brandon W. Youker Ph.D

International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) defines impact assessment as “the process of identifying the future consequences of current or proposed action.” “IAIA is a forum for advancing innovation, development and communication of best practice in impact assessment. Its international membership promotes development of local and global capacity for the application of environmental assessment in which sound science and full public participation provide a foundation for equitable and sustainable development.”

Ethnography And Evaluation: Their Relationship And Three Anthropological Models Of Evaluation, Brandon W. Youker Ph.D

Brandon W. Youker Ph.D

This paper examines the relationship between ethnographic research methods and evaluation theory and methodology. It is divided into two main sections: (a) ethnography in evaluation and (b) anthropological models of evaluation. Three levels of the leading anthropological models of evaluation are summarized, which include responsive evaluation, goal-free evaluation, and constructivist evaluation. In conclusion, (a) there is no consensual definition of ethnography; (b) in many circumstances, ethnographic evaluation models may be beneficial; and (c) ethnography can be used in evaluation but requires a high level of analysis to transform ethnographic data into useful information for eliciting an evaluative conclusion.