Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Research, Narrative And Fiction: Conference Story, Jonathan Wyatt

The Qualitative Report

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the discussion concerning the value and validity of fiction, and arts-based approaches more broadly, as research. I offer this contribution through a narrative: Conference Story. The narrative involves its characters, in an Oxford pub, debating the merits and otherwise of Peter Clough’s (2002) book, Narratives and Fictions in Educational Research. The form, fictional narrative, performs and personifies this discussion. The article considers Clough’s purposes in undertaking and presenting his research in this form, the philosophical position(s) that underpin(s) it, the extent to which his narratives are indeed research, and how such …

Masks And Sartre's Imaginary: Masked Performance And The Imaging Consciousness, William Keith Tims

Communication Dissertations

The use of masks in performance and actor training is often linked to the imagination, but there is seldom discussion of the nature of this imaginary link. Using the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (most especially his work The Imaginary) and the writings of modern mask theorists, this dissertation examines the relationship between masks and the imaging consciousness in both masked actors and the audiences who observe them. We discover that a mask is an analogon for an Other and that a mask authorizes games of identity which play out imaginatively in the performance milieu. In fact, generally speaking, a mask …

P4p Primer, Valerie Pracilio, Janice L. Clarke

Value-Based Purchasing Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Mediating Role Of Motivation And Job Satisfaction In Work Environment-Outcome Relationships, Melissa Guzman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research that links various aspects of the work environment to important work outcomes can be traced back almost seventy years. Despite the history and proliferation of these studies, firm conclusions have not been reached regarding the ways through which the work environment impacts these outcomes. For example, mediating variables such as motivation and job satisfaction have been proposed as affective and cognitive states that could impact the environment-outcome relationships but have received little attention. Additionally, organizational and contextual moderators such as group size and demographics that could impact the relationships have been called for but have yet to be studied. …

Abstencionismo, Escolaridad Y Confianza En Las Instituciones Las Elecciones Federales De 2003 En México, Benjamin (Benny) Temkin, Rodrigo Salazar Elena

benjamin (benny) temkin

The 2003 midterm federal elections in Mexico reveal that municipalities whose populations score higher on educational attainment also exhibit lower voter turnout rates, thus contradicting an empirical regularity found in Mexico and in democracies, more generally. This article uses data from the 2000 and 2003 Latinobarometro surveys and panel data from the 2001-2003 National Survey of Political Culture and Citizen Practices (ENCUP) to explore the individual determinants of this aggregate finding. It argues that this municipal-level result is a product of the fact that more highly educated citizens reduced their levels of trust in political institutions. This study shows that …

Arousal And Activation Effects On Physiological And Behavioral Responding During A Continuous Performance Task, Jacqueline A. Rushby, Robert J. Barry, Adam R. Clarke, Mohammad Vaezmousavi

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Based on previous work indicating different neural substrates, two aspects of energetic state, arousal and activation, have been conceptualised separately in our laboratory. Arousal has been defined as the energetic state at any particular time, and task-related activation as the task-related change in state from resting baseline to the task situation. Both are reflected in electrodermal activity and measured by skin conductance level. Our previous studies in this area have indicated that physiological responses to stimuli in a task are dependent on the arousal level at the time of stimulus presentation, rather than the task-related activation. In contrast, performance on …

The Effects Of Employment On Academic Performance Of Australian Accounting Students, Anura De Zoysa, Kathleen M. Rudkin

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This study examines factors that impact students engaged in paid employment while studying in a tertiary accounting program in a regional Australian university. It examines the differences in experience of domestic and international students. No direct significant relationship was found between paid employment and academic performance for the overall study sample. There was a positive relationship found between paid employment and academic performance with respect to domestic students. However, in the case of international students a negative relationship between paid employment and academic performance was observed. A significant positive relationship between a shift work pattern of paid employment and academic …

Does Ownership Affect A Firm's Performance And Default Risk In Jordan?, Rami Zeitun, Gary Gang Tian

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine the impact of ownership structure on firm performance and the default risk of a sample of publicly listed firms.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper examines the impact of ownership structure on firm performance and the default risk of a sample of 59 publicly listed firms in Jordan from 1989 to 2002.

Findings – The main findings were: ownership structure has significant effects on the accounting measure of performance return on assets (ROE); government shares are significantly negatively related to the firm's performance ROE; defaulted firms have a high concentration ownership compared with non-defaulted firms …

Macroeconomic Determinants Of Corporate Performance And Failure: Evidence From An Emerging Market The Case Of Jordan, Rami Zeitun, Gary Tian, Steve Keen

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This study investigates the impact of aggregate economic risk on a company’s performance and failure in a panel estimation using 167 Jordanian companies during 1989-2003. Our finding shows that unanticipated changes in interest rate negatively and significantly affect firms’ performance measured by ROA, which suggests that an interest rate rise increases the cost of borrowing and then further negatively affects a firm’s profit. We also found that both the production manufacturing index and Islamic credit facilities positively and significantly affect a firm’s performance. The positive and significant impact of Islamic credit facilities reflects the importance and the significance of the …

Performance Comparison Of Subtractive Resistive Readout With Conventional Resistive Readout For A High-Resolution Compact Gamma Camera, Y J. Qi, M J. Zhang, C L. Zhao, R F. Wojcik

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

The purpose of this study was to investigate an optimal readout for a high-resolution compact gamma camera with maximum performance in crystal element identifications. The compact camera is based on a pixellated Nal(Tl) crystal with 1.2 mm pixel size coupled to a 5" Hamamatsu R3292 PSPMT. A conventional resistive-chain readout was initially developed for the camera. Then a novel subtractive resistive readout developed was utilized to optimize the performance of the camera. The performance of the camera was evaluated by raw flood images of a 137Cs source. The results show that the conventional resistive readout results in a significant shrinkage …

On The Performance Of Short Forward Error-Correcting Codes, Sheng Tong, Dengsheng Lin, Aleksandar Kavcic, Li Ping, Baoming Bai

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This letter investigates the performance of short forward error-correcting (FEC) codes. Reed-Solomon (RS) codes and concatenated zigzag codes are chosen as representatives of classical algebraic codes and modern simple iteratively decodable codes, respectively. Additionally, random binary linear codes are used as a baseline reference. Our main results (demonstrated by simulations and ensemble distance spectrum analysis) are as follows: 1) Short RS codes are as good as random binary linear codes; 2) Carefully designed short low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are almost as good as random binary linear codes; 3) Low complexity belief propagation decoders incur considerable performance loss at short coding …

An Application Of A Psychometric Personality Type Inventory To Improve Team Development And Performance, Terence J. Froggatt, Nathan J. Bibby

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The issue of individual type preferences and how they relate to learning and human resource management are explored. Team learning, knowledge transfer, characteristics of leadership and trust and trusting in the context of team development and performance, are analyzed through the use of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. The research is conducted with a semi professional Australian Rules football team. The team consists of a culturally diverse group. Predominantly, Australian men between the ages of 18 and 35 years. The men are university educated, trades professionals or blue collar workers, who volunteered to complete the Myers Briggs Type Indicator with …

An Assessment Of The Research Performance Of Commerce Faculties In Australia, Abbas Valadkhani, Simon Ville

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

There is a growing policy focus in Australian higher education on quantitative research performance assessment. However, most of the analysis has addressed aggregate performance at the institutional level, an approach inconsistent with recent policy emphasis on diversity among universities, and one that ignores performance variations across disciplines. We use cluster analysis to classify one of the ten broad fields of education, that is, management and commerce. Using averaged and available data for 2000-2004 on various research measures, partial rankings are provided. Factor analysis is utilised to generate full-multidimensional rankings within the resulting clusters. Our results show that low total research …

Effect Of Repeated Function Allocation And Reliability On Automation Induced Monitoring Inefficiency, Lauriann Maria Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to extend previous findings of Mouloua, Parasuraman, and Molloy (1993), Parasuraman, Mouloua, and Molloy (1996), Hilburn, Parasuraman, and Mouloua (1996), and Oakley, Mouloua, and Hancock (2003) by: 1) examining the effect of repeated adaptive function allocation to manual control of minimal length (5 minutes) to reduce of human error and minimize workload; 2) explore the placement or timing of adaptive function allocation intervals (approximately 20 minutes of automation control to reduce the human operators' monitoring decrement between intervals, maintain adaptive recovery performance levels, and improve response times); 3) examine different levels of automation reliability …

Valuing Volunteers: The Impact Of Volunteerism On Hospital Performance, Renee Brent Hotchkiss

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Volunteers have been present in healthcare settings for centuries, however there is little empirical evidence supporting the impact that volunteers make on hospital performance. Since the 1990s, hospitals in the United States have had a great deal of pressure to produce high quality care at minimum expense. With the pressures of managed care and accrediting agencies, the benefits of using volunteers in a hospital setting are multiplied. Furthermore, as the population of the United States grows and the aging population creates more healthcare needs, the need for volunteers in hospitals may increase. This study utilized multiple regression analysis to explore …