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An Analogue Of Science, Michael Albert Minervini

Dissertations

There is no science of human behavior, not even an incipient one. The popular conception of applied behavior analysis as a genuine principle-driven technology is mostly an illusion. Two sorts of evidence support this conclusion. The first is an ever widening split between the field's basic and applied realms. The second, thus far unacknowledged, is that when the concepts of operant and respondent conditioning are extended to human behavior, they are often rendered as no more than metaphors. These metaphors are not confined to casual discourse or even to interpretation. In fact, they are the prevailing form of extension in …

A Pilot Test Of The Career Adjustment And Development Inventory As A Career Needs Analysis Technique, Richard W. Zinser

Dissertations

A review of the career development literature in current journals revealed several important trends that accentuate the need for additional career services for working adults. Moreover, assessment techniques currently used are transparent and rely mainly on participants' self perceptions. A new career inventory (Crites, 1982), which is based on a taxonomy of adult career problems, has been developed to measure the career adjustment of establishment stage individuals. The instrument was developed as a more effective assessment instrument for the purpose of uncovering employee needs, and for designing appropriate career development programs.

The Career Adjustment and Development Inventory (CADI) was administered …

Applied Thermoplastic Screw Plastication Theory: Industry Acceptance And Implications For Plastics Processing Education, Paul V. Engelmann

Dissertations

Rapid expansion of the thermoplastics processing industry has increased the need for plastics education and training. Screw plastication is the major method of melting plastics in order to mold or extrude them into useful products. Thus, information about the role of plastication is needed to provide guidance for plastics education and training.

This study sought confirmation of suspected differences existing in the amount of knowledge personnel have about thermoplastic screw plastication, dependent upon: (a) the type of plastics process used, and (b) their job classifications. Furthermore, the study collected data in three additional areas: (1) the extent to which persons …

The Effects Of Leadership Style And Work Setting On The Job Satisfaction Of Teachers Of The Trainable Mentally Impaired, John Charles Woods

Dissertations

This study examined the effect that leadership style and work setting would have on the job satisfaction of teachers of the trainable mentally impaired (TMI). Leadership style was based on the adaptability score from the LEAD Other instrument by Hersey and Blanchard (1982). Work setting was defined by one of three teaching situations, (1) integrated, with one or two teachers of the TMI working in a regular education building; (2) clustered, with three or more teachers of the TMI working in a regular education building; or (3) segregated, with teachers of the TMI working in a separate facility. Job satisfaction …

Effectiveness Of Employee Participation Groups In A Manufacturing Company, John F. Blamy

Dissertations

This case study investigated the short term effectiveness of Quality of Work Life participation groups in a Midwest manufacturing division of a major worldwide automotive corporation. Six traditional procedural measures were used to evaluate performance. These measures of performance were: employee attendance, written grievances, scrap produced, quality audits, customer complaints, and productivity.

Six hypotheses were formulated for this study: (1) Employees in departments with employee participation groups will improve their attendance more than employees in departments that do not have employee participation groups. (2) Employees in departments with employee participation groups will decrease the number of formal grievances more than …

Gas-Phase Reactions Of Methylene Chloride And Methylene Chloride-Trichloroethylene Mixture With Methane In Tubular Flow Reactor And Atmospheric Pressure, Javad Tavakoli-Attar

Dissertations

Reactions of methylene chloride diluted in methane and Argon and a mixture of methylene chloride + trichloroethylene diluted in methane and argon are studied in three flow reactors of different surface to volume ratios 4, 10.5, and 16 mm ID , atmospheric pressure and over a temperature range of 750-1000 °C. Experiments were conducted isothermally, ±5 °C over central 80% of oven length using a three zone oven. Argon was added as a diluent in order to limit carbon (s) formation. The concentration ratios of methylene chloride/methane/argon and methylene chloride/trichloroethylene/methane/argon was held constant at 1:4:10 and 1:1:40:40 respectively, throughout the …

An Evaluation Of An Intervention Program For Juvenile Probationers, Kevin I. Minor

Dissertations

Although the efficacy of correctional rehabilitation was questioned during the early 1970s, recent research has demonstrated that certain intervention programs, when implemented under appropriate conditions, are effective in reducing illegal behavior. The objective of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of a court-based intervention for juvenile probationers.

The program was developed on the basis of caseworkers' assessments of youths' problems and needs. The theoretical perspective underlying the intervention consisted of a joint combination of critical, social control, and differential association theories. A major implication of theory is that the juvenile court's capacity to facilitate informal social control should be …

The Effects Of Using Print Media In Teaching Critical Thinking Skills To Adult Students, Gloria Jean Mccormick

Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of an educational program in which print media were employed to teach critical thinking skills to adult education students. The major problem of this research was whether or not adult students, who lack a high school diploma, show greater improvement in critical thinking if they participate in a critical thinking skills program using print media, than if they do not. Adult education students in three suburban school districts of Macomb County, Michigan were the subjects of this study.

The methodology used in this study was a non-randomized control group, prettest-posttest …

The Relationship Between Life Stressors And Stress Related Medical Problems Of Middle School Administrators, Marjorie Patton

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify relationships among reported medical problems and life stressors perceived by a selected group of middle school administrators. The subjects were 110 members of the Michigan Association of Middle School Educators (MAMSE). Instruments used to collect data were the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) and the Medical Problems Checklist (MPC).

A single primary research question was investigated. Is there a correlation between stressful life events and reported medical probems of middle school administrators? Correlations were computed from data collected by administration of the two research instruments. The chi-square method was used for investigation. …

The Effects Of Participative Management On Teacher Satisfaction During Periods Of Organizational Decline, Robert Michael O'Brien

Dissertations

Public school teachers and administrators are increasingly challenged to demonstrate effectiveness in the face of organizational decline. A management system proposed by researchers in organizational development to promote worker effectiveness is participatory management. This study investigated the effects of participatory management as they related to teacher satisfaction and productivity during organizational decline. Two local school districts that used a participatory management system, identified as Quality of Work Life (QWL) districts, were studied. Two similar local school districts that did not use a participatory management system were also studied. The results of the analysis indicate that there were no significant differences …

Administrator And Consultant Perceptions Of Consultant Services In Michigan Schools, Julia A. Berg

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine administrator and consultant perceptions regarding consultant services in Michigan schools as related to: (a) services provided, (b) roles, (c) sources of funding, (d) sources for identifying services, (e) characteristics and components that may influence selection, and (f) methods used for evaluation. A review of literature was conducted related to the six survey questions of the study.

Responses to surveys were analyzed from 116 (85% response rate) randomly selected Michigan school superintendents and other administrators and 58 (58% response rate) consultants identified as providing service in Michigan school districts during the 1986-87 school …

The Effects Of Spouse-Based Cognitive-Behavior Therapy On The Treatment Of Agoraphobia, Joan Woods

Dissertations

The purpose of this clinical research was to determine whether spouse-supported treatment of agoraphobia would result in greater improvement on measures of exposure and avoidance than would individual treatment or no treatment. It was hypothesized that Couples Treatment subjects would demonstrate a significantly greater change from pretest to posttest than would Individual Treatment subjects or No-Treatment Control subjects. The study further predicted that significant improvements would be demonstrated for both treated groups on the same outcome measures, pretest to posttest and from pretest to follow-up.

Total N was 10 subjects, all were agoraphobic, married, and female, with 4 in Couples …

Effects Of Terminal-Link Response Topography On Choice Behavior Under Concurrent-Chains Schedules, Stephen P. Starin

Dissertations

Previous research has indicated that both absolute response rate and choice behavior differs under concurrent chains requiring different terminal-link responses, even when the reinforcement schedules are nominally identical. To date, no studies have investigated responding under concurrent chains with unequal schedules and different topographies arranged in the terminal links. Moreover, although the delay-reduction hypothesis has been widely tested using concurrent chains in which the same response topography is required in all links, the generality of the delay-reduction hypothesis in describing performance when different terminal-link topographies are required has yet to be examined. The present study was designed to address both …

The Effects Of Caretaking Settings On School Readiness Of 4-Year-Olds, Joan C. Sergent

Dissertations

The effects of daytime caretaking settings and the nature and number of activities in those settings on school readiness and receptive language levels of 4-year-old children were investigated. Daytime caretaking settings, defined as the setting experienced by the 4-year-old the year prior to entering kindergarten, were determined through interviews administered to the parent/guardian of each of the 185 4-year-old participants. School readiness and receptive language levels of the 4-year-old participants were determined by individual administration of the Gesell School Readiness Screening Test (GSRST) and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) respectively. The settings were categorized as group educational, such as preschool …

Assessment Of Autonomic Regulation Of Heart Rate Variability, Shaw-Jyh Shin

Dissertations

Complex demodulation, accompanied by the techniques of interpolation, detrending and zero-phase-shift lowpass filtering were used to examine the effect of both divisions of the autonomic nervous system (sympathetic and parasympathetic) on heart rate by analyzing the heart rate variability signal from dogs under two different classical conditionings: CS+ and CS-, which cause different dynamic pattern changes in the autonomic nervous system to regulate the heart rate.

Unlike power spectral analysis, complex demodulation gives results in the time domain and shows the variation of amplitude and phase over time at a given frequency. The variation of phase indicates the frequency deviation …

Multiyear Drought Simulation With Periodic-Stochastic Hydrologic Processes, Lankeswara Hemal Wijayaratne

Dissertations

Previous studies on multiyear droughts are often limited to the analysis of historic annual flow series. A major problem in these studies is the unavailability of long historic flow records, on which to perform the analysis. To overcome this difficulty, the present study has used synthetically generated mean annual flow series to suppliment the historic flows. For the purpose of generating flows, a general methodology was developed to propose a mathematical model based on the harmonic and stochastic analyses of the historic flow series. The main objective was to derive a large population of multiyear drought events from the generated …

Sorption And Desorption Of Organic Compounds By Flyash, Kashinath Banerjee

Dissertations

A sorbent treatment process has been developed which uses flyash as sorbent in the treatment of highly toxic and hazardous chemicals; these include: Alcohols, Aldehydes, Ketones and Aromatics. Batch, as well as dynamic, studies were performed, in different phases, during the investigation. Single and multiple solute systems were examined separately. The samples were analyzed using a Flame Ionization Detector Gas Chromatograph.

The result of this study demonstrates that isolation/ immobilization of the organic pollutants is technologically feasible by adsorbing the contaminants onto flyash. The residual carbon content of the flyash plays a very significant role during the treatment process. The …

An Investigation Of The Traditional And Non-Traditional College Students' Perceived Benefits Regarding Participation In The Cooperative Education Program, Beatrice C. Ullrich

Dissertations

Cooperative education has become an important component of education. The basis for cooperative education is that learning occurs outside the classroom as well as in the classroom. The shift in employment patterns from an industrial society to a knowledge and information based society means that many of the existing types of jobs will disappear. The value of cooperative education exists in its ability to provide a transition from school to work and its flexibility to respond to industries' needs and individuals' training needs.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences of the traditional cooperative education student and …

Attributes Of Undergraduates Majoring In Scientific And Technological Disciplines: Perseverance And Commitments, Judith Watlington Edwin Edd

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was first to determine the characteristics that distinguished persisters from nonpersisters in the fields of science and technology; second, to determine the effects of sex, college choice, parental income, parental educational background, GPA, and academic and social integration factors on persistence; and third, to suggest program implementation for assisting students in the science and technology disciplines to make choices in "fit" of characteristics to college environment. Subjects for this study were randomly selected from a group of 256 juniors at the University of California, San Diego who had initially selected science or technology as an …

Naturalistic Inquiry: An Appropriate Method For Evaluating Customer Training A Case Study Of A Computer System Value-Added Reseller, Barbara Coulter Broderick Edd

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to illustrate the use of naturalistic inquiry as an appropriate method for evaluating customer training. The study's scope was limited to computer system value-added-resellers (VARs). Four research questions were identified, each addressing the use of naturalistic inquiry in this setting. Case study methodology was selected as the most effective approach to demonstrate use of this type of evaluation. In order to limit the focus of the case study, the researcher identified three propositions. These propositions addressed the following: (1) the evolution of computer system VAR's customer training programs; (2) the merit and worth of …

A Study Of Licensed Psychologists And The Problem Of Addressing Spiritual/Religious Issues In Therapy, Suzanne Lorenz Brennan

Dissertations

The study was done in response to a documented concern in the literature that therapists are unprepared to treat the spiritual concerns of their clients who come from a population in which 95% profess a belief in God.

One objective of the study was to determine the spiritual orientation of licensed psychologists and their attitudes toward religious belief and addressing religious issues in psychotherapy. Other objectives were to determine the amount of help received in addressing these issues during training and supervision and how competent they perceived themselves to be in this regard. Responses of the two license levels, full …

The Effects Of A Wilderness/Adventure Program On The Self-Concept, Locus Of Control Orientation, And Interpersonal Behavior Of Delinquent Adolescents, Timothy J. Zwart

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a 26-day therapeutic wilderness program for delinquent adolescent males on three conceptually distinct but closely related constructs: self-concept, locus of control orientation, and interpersonal behavior. Justification for the study was derived from the limitations of past wilderness/adventure research which suggested that there was a need for additional research on the effects of this type of alternative program for delinquent adolescents.

It was hypothesized that following participation in this program the youths would exhibit increased self-concept, more internal locus of control orientation, would express higher needs for inclusion and affection …

The Efficacy Of Bilingual Education In Relation To Student Linguistic Type, Program Type, And Program Setting, Carol Stubbs Rice

Dissertations

The focus of this study was the differential effectiveness of bilingual education models as determined through the examination of Title VII project evaluations. The evaluation data were subject to a meta-analysis and the results compared to national norms.

The study examined the efficacy of bilingual education in relation to student type, program type and program setting, using data produced by projects from 1983-1986. The study design was based on the gap-reduction design, as modified for Title VII evaluations, with group means used as the unit of analysis. The study sample contained 2,500 monolingual and limited English proficient students from the …

The Effects Of Aerobic Exercise On Anxiety In Pregnant Women, Janet L. Fourman

Dissertations

The objective of this study was to determine if aerobic exercise affects trait anxiety in pregnant women and if selected demographic variables relate to trait anxiety. These variables were age, occupation, family income, general physical and mental health, education, lifestyle, and previous exercise history. The independent variable was aerobic exercise. The dependent variable was anxiety which was measured by the trait portion of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, 1983).

This research was quasi-experimental and used the Solomon Four-Group Design. The experimental group consisted of women who participated in a Pregnancy Fitness Aerobic exercise program for the duration of their pregnancies. …

Determination Of A "Benchmark" Rate Of Return For Regulated Small Telephone Utilities In The State Of Michigan, Gondy Bhaskara Rao

Dissertations

This study presents an approach that is consistent with regulatory standards of fairness, and enables the Public Service Commission staff to determining "benchmark" rates of return for Michigan's small telephone utilities. It applies only where they are either subsidiaries of holding companies or independently operating but whose securities are not publicly traded.

The methodology developed in this research is couched in the capital asset pricing framework and is powerful enough to capture the parent-subsidiary relationship to the ultimate determination of benchmark rates of return for utilities that have similar risks.

To evaluate the methodology for consistency with the regulatory standards, …

Educational Outcomes Of Children With Two Working Parents, Michael B. Dib

Dissertations

In this study five measures of ability or achievement (I.Q., reading comprehension, vocabulary, math concepts, and math computation) for each of four grade levels (third, fourth, fifth, and sixth) were analyzed to determine whether there were significant differences for students from traditional working parent families and students from two-working-parent families. An ex post facto design was used.

Subjects were 335 third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students from a single public school district in the state of Michigan. These students were identified by teachers or principals as being from either a traditional or a two-working-parent family. All ability and achievement …

A Survey Of Oral Communication Instructional Practices In The Elementary Public Schools Of Michigan, James N. Walker

Dissertations

Instruction in oral communication is critical to education. Oral communication skills are needed in the development of skills in written language, math, problem solving, and reading. Oral communication skills are important in achieving academic, vocational, and personal success. On November 1, 1978, speech education was recognized as a basic skill by United States law.

The purpose of this study was to determine the oral communication instructional practices in Michigan public elementary schools grades K-5. Eight research questions were identified:

(1) Is instruction provided? (2) What is the "basis" for instruction? (3) What materials are used? (4) What is the method …

The Development And Field Testing Of A Semi-Programed Text For The Establishment Of Reading And Writing Repertoires With Mexican-Illiterate Adults, Marco Wilfredo Salas Martinez

Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to design and evaluate the effectiveness of a Semi-Programed text for establishing reading and writing skills for Spanish-speaking illiterate adults, and to compare it with the Mexican Secretariat of Public Education Reading and Writing program. Thirty-two male prisoners incarcerated at the Regional Prison of Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, were randomly assigned to one of four groups: (a) Semi-Programed I; (b) Semi-Programed II; (c) Conventional I; and (d) Conventional II. Subjects of the Semi-Programed Instructional condition groups were taught to read and write with a Semi-Programed text, which was based on the behavioral principles and …

An Assessment Of The Instructional Needs Of Ohio's Educational Administrators Relative To Computer Technology, Mary F. Missavage Berney

Dissertations

This study was conducted to identify the needs of Ohio's educational administrators relative to the administrative and curricular uses of computer technology. It answers the following questions: (1) What are the felt needs of Ohio's educational administrators relative to the administrative and curricular uses of computer technology? (2) What are the felt needs of Ohio's NCATE-accredited faculty of educational administration relative to instruction in the areas of administrative and curricular uses of computer technology for educational administrators? (3) What are the anticipated needs of experts in computing relative to the administrative and curricular uses of computer technology? (4) What are …

An Analysis Of Selected California Community College Chief Executive Officers' Perceptions Of The Effectiveness Of District Governing Board Evaluation Policies And Practices, Sherrill Lea Hatfield Amador Edd

Dissertations

Purpose. The focus of this study was to examine whether the California community college chief executive officers perceived their governing boards' evaluation policies and practices to be effective, and whether those evaluations contributed to their improved performance. Methodology. An ethnographic research design and interviewing methodologies were used for this study. The sample consisted of 20 California community college districts and chief executive officers selected from the 70 California community college districts based on: (a) multi-college and multi-campus district or single district organization, (b) northern or southern California district location, and (c) the district's chief executive's length of service as the …