Digital Commons Network^™

Employee Age Differences In Formal Performance Feedback Reactions: Examining The Effects Of Perceived Valence, Content, And Delivery, Gabriela Burlacu

Dissertations and Theses

As the nature of work is rapidly changing, organizations in developed nations all over the world are experiencing shifts in the age composition of their workforces. These changes, which include an aging workforce that is becoming increasingly age-diverse, indicate that organizational researchers and practitioners need to be better aware of how age differences manifest themselves in the workplace and what implications this has for effective employee management. In the current study it is proposed that employees of different ages react differently to various elements of a formal performance feedback event. Specifically, Carstensen's developmental Socio-emotional Selectivity Theory is used as a …

Closed Loop Satisfaction Measurement: New Wine From Old Bottles, Michael Thomas O'Connell

Dissertations and Theses

A field experiment examines within a financial services firm the impact of a customer satisfaction survey-based intervention that enables front-line employees to identify and contact less-than satisfied customers (less than 9 on a 10-point scale) to proactively prevent potential customer defections. The impact is measured using operational data from 28,000 new customers and their associated defection behavior over a period of eight years. The experiment applies binomial Z-tests of proportions to assess the difference in defection rates of targeted and non-targeted customers before and after the intervention. The research finds that the use of closed loop satisfaction measurement reduces customer …

Sustainable Event Management Of Music Festivals: An Event Organizer Perspective, Stephanie L. Stettler

Dissertations and Theses

Sustainably managed music festivals have significant value and can provide a multitude of benefits to a healthy, sustainable and desirable society if their negative impacts are mitigated and positive impacts cultivated. To reach this great potential, sustainable event management of music festivals must become widely adopted and expanded as common practice. To drive this improvement of sustainable event management, there is a need to first understand the barriers and success factors event organizers face moving their music festivals toward sustainability. This study uses a research design of mixed quantitative-qualitative methods: a survey of thirty diverse music festival organizers across the …

An Evaluation Of Moderating Influences Of Employee Proactive Personality: Empowerment And Political Skill, Deborah Kaylee Ford

Dissertations and Theses

An action-orientation within the workplace is often sought out by organizations as a source for competitive advantage. Organizational leaders are increasingly reliant on independently driven employees that will take action without being instructed to do so. Toward this effort, proactive personality has become increasingly popular within the literature as a personality trait associated with an employee's propensity to take charge of situations and demonstrate initiative to make a positive impact. In identifying potential variables that will moderate the effects of proactive personality, a highly relevant construct is empowerment. Proactive personality is thought of as a trait, whereas empowerment can be …

Family-Supportive Supervisory Behaviors As A Moderator Of The Relationship Between Job Strain And Workers' Blood Pressure, Christopher Scott Harper

Dissertations and Theses

Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death in industrialized nations. Research indicates that job strain may be significantly related to cardiovascular disease in employees with little to no social support. Using the JDC-S model developed by Karasek (1979) and elaborated upon by Johnson and Hall (1988), the family-supportive supervisory behaviors (FSSB) measure created by Hammer et al., (2009), and the blood pressure wrist monitor device Omron317T, this study examined FSSB as a moderator of the relationship between job strain, job demands, job control and workers' blood pressure on work and non-work days. Sixty-nine grocery store workers from …

Resolving Work-Family Issues Of Parents Raising Children With Disabilities: A Human Resource Training Intervention, Eileen M. Brennan, Julie M. Rosenzweig, Anna M. Malsch, Lisa Maureen Stewart

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

PDF version of a presentation given at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Work and Social Research, Tampa, FL, Jan. 2011.

Patients Reasons For Choosing Office-Based Buprenorphine: Preference For Patient-Centered Care, P. Todd Korthuis, Jessica Gregg, Wendy E. Rogers, Dennis Mccarty, Christina Nicolaidis, Joshua Boverman

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objectives - To explore HIV-infected patients' attitudes about buprenorphine treatment in office-based and opioid treatment program (OTP) settings.

Methods - We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 29 patients with co-existing HIV infection and opioid dependence seeking buprenorphine maintenance therapy in office-based and OTP settings. We used thematic analysis of transcribed audiorecorded interviews to identify themes.

Results - Patients voiced a strong preference for office-based treatment. Four themes emerged to explain this preference. First, patients perceived the greater convenience of office-based treatment as improving their ability to address HIV and other healthcare issues. Second, they perceived a strong patient-focused orientation in …

X, Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

The author focuses on the issue of undisclosed publications, by which she means works published under pseudonyms or anonymously. The author comments on the proliferation of anonymity in the era of the Internet, saying that technology allows people to be not accountable for their actions and to break social contracts in the scholarly world. The author uses the example of the library field and discusses peer review and professional discourse.

The Balanced Scorecard: A Systemic Model For Evaluation And Assessment Of Learning Outcomes?, Thomas Bielavitz

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

The goal of this paper is to explore using Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard methodology as a systemic model for outcomes assessment. The expectations of academic accrediting agencies have shifted from measurement of inputs and outputs to that of the library's impact on learning and demonstrating accountability. Recent literature has presented methods for performing specific aspects of outcomes assessment. However, the scorecard methodology may provide a systemic advantage beneficial to library administrators and managers. Methods -- This paper provides a selective review of outcomes assessment in academic libraries and a description of the balanced scorecard methodology, focusing on its relevance …

A Twenty Year Path: Learning About Assessment; Learning From Assessment, Debra L. Gilchrist

Communications in Information Literacy

This article reviews the development of educational assessment from the 1970's to the present, including discussions of basic working definitions and models of assessment in information literacy. It reflects on what librarians have learned from assessment and about assessment, and how this information is being used to improve current and future assessment offerings.

The Evolution Of A Testing Tool For Measuring Undergraduate Information Literacy Skills In The Online Environment, Elizabeth Mulherrin, Husein Abdul-Hamid

Communications in Information Literacy

The construction and validity of an assessment tool mapped to objectives in a high enrollment credit-bearing information literacy course delivered primarily online is the focus of this article. An open book and non-proctored objective test can be a reliable measure for assessing student competencies in basic information literacy skills, both at the course level and for reporting to national accrediting bodies and state agencies. An analysis of overall student performance on test items that are mapped to information literacy outcomes helps to identify competencies that need improvement in a course, as well as provide a baseline for informing the process …

Building A Seamless Environment For Assessment Of Information Literacy: Libraries, Student Affairs, And Learning Outside The Classroom, Scott Walter

Communications in Information Literacy

Assessment has been a topic of interest in higher education for decades, with its recent growth rooted in a number of scholarly traditions, as well as the broader interest in "accountability" that has been characteristic of American education since the 1980s. Many previous studies have demonstrated that the literature of assessment in higher education is a rich resource for those wishing to identify effective approaches to the assessment of information literacy. This piece invites readers to pay attention to the lessons taught by faculty development experts as well as by scholars of the science of teaching and learning, but also …

Child Welfare Workforce Turnover: Frontline Workers' Experiences With Organizational Culture And Climate, And Implications For Organizational Practice, Melanie Dawn Sage

Dissertations and Theses

Public child welfare agencies experience front line worker turnover rates as high as 25% a year. Worker turnover has significant financial costs to agencies, and has been linked to negative outcomes for children in care. Prior research has linked organizational factors, such as organizational climate, culture, and supervisor satisfaction, to turnover intent in child welfare populations. This research uses an empowerment framework to turn to workers directly to answer the question, "What are the organizational factors that lead frontline child welfare workers to stay or leave the agency, and what, then, are the implications for agency administrators?" This study relies …

La Palabra Es Salud: A Comparative Study Of The Effectiveness Of Popular Education Vs. Traditional Education For Enhancing Health Knowledge And Skills And Increasing Empowerment Among Parish-Based Community Health Workers (Chws), Noelle Wiggins

Dissertations and Theses

Popular education is a mode of teaching and learning which seeks to bring about more equitable social conditions by creating settings in which people can identify and solve their own problems. While the public health literature offers evidence to suggest that popular education is an effective strategy for increasing empowerment and improving health, there have been no systematic attempts to compare the outcomes of popular education to those of traditional education. The goal of La Palabra es Salud was to conduct such a comparison among Latino, parish-based Community Health Workers (CHWs). The study employed a quasi-experimental design, mixed methods, and …

Participatory Action Research With Dignity Village: An Action Tool For Empowerment Within A Homeless Community, Heather Irene Mosher

Dissertations and Theses

With homelessness continuing to rise over the past two decades, disenfranchised unhoused people have sparked a national movement to build for themselves democratically governed communities of affordable housing. Dignity Village, in Portland Oregon, is one of the longest running and most organized self-help housing communities in the nation. This paper presents a theoretical systems-based model of a developmental pathway out of homelessness in the U.S. that has as one of its key steps membership and participation in humane and dignified "self-help micro-housing"; communities such as Dignity Village.

This research involved working collaboratively with Dignity Village on a participatory action research …

Negotiating Meaning With Educational Practice: Alignment Of Preservice Teachers' Mission, Identity, And Beliefs With The Practice Of Collaborative Action Research, Jan Marie Carpenter

Dissertations and Theses

The case study examined how three preservice teachers within a Master of Arts in Teaching program at a small, private university negotiated meaning around an educational practice--collaborative action research. Preservice teachers must negotiate multiple, and often competing, internal and external discourses as they sort out what educational practices, policies, organizational structures to accept or reject as presented in the teacher education program. This negotiation is a dynamic, contextual, unique meaning-making process that extends, redirects, dismisses, reinterprets, modifies, or confirms prior beliefs (Wenger, 1998).

Korthagen's (2004) model for facilitating understanding and reflection was used to explore the process of negotiating meaning. …

Communities Of Color In Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile, Ann Curry-Stevens, Amanda Cross-Hemmer, Coalition Of Communities Of Color

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Existing data that informs decision making in Multnomah County inadequately captures the lived experiences of communities of color. Rarely do existing reports include dimensions of race and ethnicity. Much research has been undertaken without the involvement of those most affected by the decisions guided by the research. The impact is that communities of color are rarely visible at the level of policy. Data has been used to obscure and oppress rather than to empower communities and eliminate disparities. This is not acceptable, and leads to inequitable policy and devastating outcomes for people of color.

"Communities of Color in Multnomah County: …

Governance In Motion: Service Provision And Child Welfare Outcomes In A Performance-Based, Managed Care Contracting Environment, Bowen Mcbeath, William Meezan

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Examining the linkage between service provision and client outcomes is important in performance-based human service environments. Since most performance initiatives reward agencies for improving client outcomes rather than providing specific services, managers may have incentives to streamline workers’ efforts and reduce resources devoted to services considered nonessential. This article uses data from a performance-based child welfare initiative to examine the relationship between child permanency outcomes, the services provided by caseworkers, and the environment surrounding frontline service provision. Findings indicate that greater service efforts are required to reunify children with parents than to reach other outcomes, including adoption and placement with …

Teaching Matters: U.S. Government Information And Information Literacy: A Time-Sensitive Issue For Our Profession, Patrick P. Ragains

Communications in Information Literacy

No abstract provided.

Hardiness, Well-Being, And Health: A Meta-Analytic Summary Of Three Decades Of Research, Celina Marie Oliver

Dissertations and Theses

In recent decades, as scientific understanding regarding the effects of stress on health and well-being has grown, researchers have shown increasing interest in personal factors such as hardiness that may enhance one's ability to remain resilient under stressful conditions. Hardiness is a complex trait composed of three components (commitment, control, and challenge) that combine synergistically to increase stress tolerance. Over time, a large and complex body of research has accumulated, and while many qualitative reviews have been conducted, quantitative summaries remain rare. This study provides an empirical synthesis of research findings examining the relationships between hardiness and correlates related to …

Assessing Online Collaboration Among Language Teachers: A Cross-Institutional Case Study, Nike Arnold, Lara Ducate, Lara Lomicka, Gillian Lord

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper focuses on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) among foreign language (FL) graduate students from three universities, who worked together to create a wiki. In order to investigate the nature of CSCL among participants, this qualitative case study used the Curtis and Lawson framework (2001) to conduct a content analysis of learners’ collaborative behaviors. Transcript and survey analyses indicate that the success of collaborative interaction depends largely on the group members themselves. Differing levels of participation indicate that not everyone was equally involved with the wiki project, which ultimately affected the level of collaboration, the group dynamics, and the final …

Dependent Care And Work-Life Outcomes : Comparing Exceptional Care And Typical Care Responsibilities, Lisa Maureen Stewart

Dissertations and Theses

Exceptional care responsibilities describe the experiences of caring for a dependent with a chronic illness or disability (Roundtree & Lynch, 2006). To date research on exceptional care responsibilities has occurred outside of the traditional work-life field. This study positions exceptional care responsibilities as a type of dependent care that goes beyond that of typical care responsibilities and argues efforts are needed both within the workplace and the community to address the challenges faced by employees with disability-related dependent care responsibilities.

The influence of supports within the workplace on the work-life barriers and related outcomes of employees with typical care and …

Literacy Leadership In Secondary Schools: A Case Study Of Teaching And Learning In Two School Districts, Gregory Berry

Dissertations and Theses

Improvement in literacy learning in secondary schools requires a dual focus: a district and school organizational leadership approach, and a classroom- and instruction-focused approach. To help close the achievement gap and improve learning for all students, whole school reform efforts must be focused on literacy. Elements of whole school reform may include professional development programs such as professional learning communities, peer coaching, and literacy coaching. The sociocultural contexts that these approaches incorporate can help improve the learning of both teachers and students and can bring about significant secondary school reform and academic improvement.

This dissertation study is a qualitative, collective, …

Evaluation Design For The District Of Columbia Department Of Corrections' Use Of Radio Frequency Identification (Rfid) Technology With Jail Inmates, Laura J. Hickman, Mel Eisman, Lois Davis

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

In consultation with the District of Columbia Department of Corrections (DC DOC), researchers developed an evaluation design oriented around five objectives. One objective is to provide timely feedback to the U.S. Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice (the funder of the evaluation), DC DOC, and other interested jurisdictions on RFID’s implementation. A second objective is to provide feedback on the process of implementing RFID. A third objective is to assess the impact of RFID’s implementation on identified outcome measures. A fourth objective is to compare costs to the facilities against the cost of implementing RFID technology, including direct and indirect …

2008 Commencement Program, Richard Pimentel

Commencement Archives 2000-09

The program for the PSU Commencement ceremony on June 14, 2008.

Richard Pimentel, author, trainer, speaker, and disability rights advocate, delivered the commencement address and was awarded an honorary doctorate by PSU Interim President Michael Reardon. Tamam W. Waritu, Class of 2008, delivered the student address.

The Washington State Patrol, Accountability-Driven Leadership, And The Organizational Factors That Propelled Their Success: An Organizational Analysis, Timothy Carl Winchell

Dissertations and Theses

In January 2002, Washington State Patrol (WSP) Chief Ronal Serpas, Ph.D., implemented his Accountability Driven Leadership (ADL) philosophy throughout the entire statewide public safety agency. The initiative was intended to re-focus personnel on agency strategic goals, objectives, and performance. ADL stressed Computer Statistic (CompStat) management tenants, decentralized decision-making, and efficiency and effectiveness performance measures.

Most CompStat research has been anecdotal in nature, meaning little empirical analysis has scrutinized the implementation of these initiatives in policing. Additionally, the principal researcher could not locate any research that examined these changes in a statewide law enforcement agency. Therefore, this case study contributes to …

Organizational Change In Corrections Organizations : The Effect Of Probation And Parole Officer Culture On Change In Community Corrections, Shea Brackin Marshman

Dissertations and Theses

Current trends in the field of community corrections make it necessary for administrators to consider innovative organizational change strategies to increase public safety. However, criminal justice administrators face pressure to maintain the status quo even as they are expected to produce successful outcomes through innovative practices. The broader implication is that administrators will have to develop proficiencies in the interpretation of theoretical concepts to make meaningful decisions about how best to use scarce resources to measure organizational variables. This research uses a case study of one community corrections organization to demonstrate how administrators in community corrections might make use of …

Police Organizations : An Empricial Examination Of American Sheriff's Offices And Municipal Police Agencies, Matthew Adam Jones

Dissertations and Theses

The landscape of American policing is comprised of a myriad of police organizations, each serving a distinct function and populace. Yet, police reformers rarely recognize this and continue to disseminate 'umbrella' policy prescriptions to all policing organizations. This body of research argues that public and police administrators must take into account the nature of the organization and its constraining forces before prescribing change or initiating policy. I argue that to intelligently construct police agencies, prescribe policy, and accurately diagnose police organization behavior we must first have a strong idea, if not solid understanding, of the factors that shape and constrain …

Measuring Community-Engaged Departments: A Study To Develop An Effective Self-Assessment Rubric For The Institutionalization Of Community Engagement In Academic Departments, Kevin Kecskes

Dissertations and Theses

Change in American higher education is occurring at a rapid pace. The increasing reemergence of civic or community engagement as a key component in the overall landscape of American higher is emblematic of that change. Academic departments play a critical role in higher education change, including institutionalizing community engagement on campuses. Yet, designing a way of measuring community engagement specifically at the level of the academic department has not been undertaken.

Based on advice from national expert/key informant interviews and the recognition of the importance of the role of academic departments in the overall institutionalization of community engagement in higher …

Shift Work In The Long-Termcare Industry : An Examination Of Organizational And Individual Factors That Influence Employee Outcomes, Kristin Elizabeth Charles

Dissertations and Theses

The long-term care (LTC) industry provides medical and social services in facility-based settings to the elderly, chronically ill, and disabled. With the aging of the United States population, the need for LTC workers is expected to drastically increase in the next decade. However, the industry faces a significant staffing shortage. One potential cause of staffing problems in LTC is working non-standard work schedules. Because of the need to provide around the clock care, LTC employees often work non-standard shifts, long hours, night work, and over weekends and holidays. Although many studies have examined health and sleep-related outcomes associated with non-standard …