Digital Commons Network^™

Examining The Behavioral And Physiological Components Of Communication Skills Training With Married Couples: Are Differential Effects Mediated By The Topic Discussed And Initial Level Of Marital Distress?, Tara L. Cornelius

Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to experimentally examine the effects of the Speaker-Listener technique when the couple was instructed to either (a) discuss an issue within, or (b) outside the marriage, on couples’ initial and long-term levels of marital distress and satisfaction. This study was designed to examine Gottman, et al. (1998) hypothesis that the Speaker-Listener skills training technique may be effective and lead to improved levels of marital satisfaction when the couple is complaining about a third party, but complaining about each other may become divisive and weaken the marital relationship, and that such an effect would …

The Effects Of Task Structure And Group Target Monetary Incentives On Social Loafing, Nelson R. Eikenhout

Dissertations

Social loafing refers to the decrease in individual performance output that occurs when individuals perform a task in groups in which the output is pooled. Pooled output refers to the performance of all group members added together to get a total group output. Therefore, because all group members contribute to a single group outcome, individual performance output is obscured. This study examined the following questions. First, what are the effects of the method of pooling the output (additive vs. disjunctive) on individuals who work on a concurrent task in small groups? Second, what are the effects of group target based …

Dear Beyond, Kirsten Hemmy

Dissertations

My project. Dear Beyond, a collection of poetry, examines the connection between landscape—both internal and external, or private and public—and environment. My poetry reflects my own unique background and my struggles with emplacement, or the placing of oneself in any particular landscape. It aims to challenge dominant paradigms of voice, expression, and even inquiry; it questions traditional, systematic forms of inquiry such as the Cartesian idea of an essential separation between object and subject. Culture and landscape, I have discovered, manifest themselves everywhere, in variegated forms: in spaciousness or intimacy, in internal and external contexts, in tactile experiences, in focused …

Patriarch Nikon's Image In Russian History And Culture, Kevin Kain

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates representations of Nikon, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia (1652-1666). I contend that Nikon's resonance in Russian national life remains largely unrecognized because traditional histories--based entirely on written sources and limited to Nikon's tenure as Patriarch--fail to reveal his broader significance in Russian artistic, political and religious culture by omitting analysis of art and material culture. This dissertation advances the study of Patriarch Nikon by assessing his image in Russian history and culture from the mid-seventeenth century forward. I demonstrate that contrary to his overwhelmingly negative image in standard histories, the Patriarch held a central place in …

Levittown, Pennsylvania: A Sociological History, Chad M. Kimmel

Dissertations

I take the suburban community of Levittown, Pennsylvania, as my field of study. I use primary documents to tell the history of this community, a story filtered through a sociological perspective, one that is firmly grounded in the sociology of C. Wright Mills. "All sociology worth the name," argued Mills, "is historical sociology." An important voice in this story is that of the original Levittown resident--those individuals still living in their homes after 50 years.

As a sociologist, my task is to uncover and make real the interrelationships between biography (the individual resident) and history (the community of Levittown and …

The Effects Of Elevated Co2 And Environmental Variation On Plant Phenotype, Herbivore Performance, And Evolutionary Potential In A Brassicacae Model System, John Michael Landosky

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Individual And Group Incentives On High Performance, Heather M. Mcgee

Dissertations

The present study examined the performance levels of high performers under equally-divided group monetary incentives, individual monetary incentives, and hourly pay to determine: (a) whether the performance levels of high performers would be higher under individual and group incentive pay systems than under an hourly pay system, (b) whether the performance of high performers would be lower under group incentives than under individual incentives, and (c) whether changes in performance would be due to comparative feedback indicating that the participant is a high performer. Participants were eleven college students who performed a computerized work task that simulated the job of …

Role Of Naming In Stimulus Categorization By Preschool Children, Caio Flavio Miguel

Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to assess whether children would categorize pictures when taught the relevant listener and speaker behaviors separately. A category-sort test was used to assess emergent conditional relations. Category-sort trials consisted of looking at (Test 1) or tacting/labeling (Test 2) a samplestimulus and selecting the appropriate comparison stimuli. In Experiment 1, 4 children (3- 5 years) were taught to tact pictures of six U.S. state maps as either north or south. An assessment was conducted to determine whether they would (1) correctly categorize or sort when presented with a visual sample and (2) select the …

A Behavioral Account Of Remembering: Precurrent Behavior And Mediation Of Delayed Matching To Sample, David W. Sidener

Dissertations

Although “memory” research and theory often come under the domain of cognitive psychology, these areas may also be seen as being open to radical behavioral interpretations. Delayed matching to sample (DMTS) preparations have often been used to study performance that involves the occurrence of behavior some time after the presentation of a relevant stimulus, or what is typically called short-term memory (STM). The current study involved three experiments that provided evidence for the role of overt behavior in the mediation of DMTS performance in five-year-old children. Experiments 1 and 2 support the assertion that sample-specific, differential mediating behavior (in the …

Exploring The Relationship Between Race-Related Stress, Identity And Well-Being Among African Americans, Darrick Tovar-Murray

Dissertations

For almost four hundred years, African Americans have been victims of race-related stress. Race-related stress is defined as the encounters between individuals and their environment that surface from racism and strain an individual's resources or threaten his or her well-being. Despite findings on the negative impact of racism on African Americans' well-being, very little research has focused on the relationships between race-related stress, identity and well-being among African Americans.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between race-related stress, identity, and well-being among African Americans. A total of 196 African American community members and college students participated …

Electronic Literacy: Teaching Literary Reading Through The Digital Medium, Robert Adams Rozema

Dissertations

Over the last decade, digital technology has become an increasingly important part of education. In the discipline of English language arts, digital technology has been enlisted to teach writing, as the word processor and more recently, the World Wide Web, have provided new tools and new publishing opportunities for student writers. The presence of digital technology is less pronounced, however, in literature instruction in secondary schools. In both theoretical and practical discussions of digital technology and literature, the two mediums have been conceived as radically different. This dissertation argues that the digital medium, and more specifically the World Wide Web, …

Negative Stereotypes And Childhood Paternal Relationships As Predictors Of Paternal Identity In African American Fathers, Danielle K. Wright

Dissertations

African American men have been widely ignored in the social science literature. When African American men have been studied, it has primarily been from a deficit model. The purpose of this study was to give voice to the African American father, whether he is working-poor, middle-class, or upper-class, biological or non-biological, residential or non-residential. The intent of the study was to explore how African American men view themselves as fathers and their own experiences of being a parent.

One hundred and one men who identified as African American, were at least 18 years old, and who had at least one …

Factors Affecting School-Based Speech-Language Pathologists’ Use Of Language Assessment Practices With Bilingual Children, Lena Gloria Caesar

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify the assessment procedures and practices of school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) employed in the state of Michigan. A survey method was used to gather information from 409 SLPs regarding the assessment procedures used for assessing both their bilingual students, as well as their monolingual English-speaking students. The survey also gathered information regarding perceptions about language proficiency, professional training, and bilingual assessment products. In order to analyze factors related to their use of recommended practices, the study investigated the relationship between selected demographic, caseload, and work-setting variables, and the type of bilingual assessment methods …

Avid Program Graduates: Negotiating The First Year Of College, Leslie J. Hays Edd

Dissertations

Although the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program has been operating in San Diego County for more than twenty years, there was a lack of research investigating how AVID program graduates experienced the transition to college. A well-established positive correlation between acceptances to four-year universities by AVID program graduates exists, but research on AVID lacked individual student narrative needed to give more depth to the data. The purpose of this case study was to investigate the transition experiences of AVID program graduates who were beginning their second year of college at competitive four-year public universities. All eight participants, in the …

Finding Meaning By Participating In Decisions Affecting Us, Our Work And Our Lives: Lessons Learned At Mondragón, David Herrera Edd

Dissertations

There has been a growing interest in exploring participatory organizational models for the last fifty years, accentuated by the recent corporate scandals that revealed the inadequacies of non-participatory organizational systems. Research studies have focused on organizational structures, policies and practices that make participation possible but it is persons who make participation happen. The purpose of this study was therefore to explore the significance of participation by examining the question: What does the experience of partaking in decision making mean to persons who engage in it. This research is a phenomenological-heuristic study. Phenomenology explores the lived experience of participating in decision …

Language Interactions Between Reading Recovery Teachers And Their English-Language Learners, Leslie Yerington Edd

Dissertations

This qualitative study investigated characteristics of student-teacher interactions during the new book introduction portion of Reading Recovery lessons. The new book introduction provides the student with background knowledge and story plot sufficient to render a successful first attempt reading the book that takes place directly after the introduction. The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of student-teacher interactions during the new book introduction portion of Reading Recovery lessons in order to describe the nature of these interactions and discover the relationships, if any exist, between the interactions and student performance. The study also searched for common themes …

The United States Supreme Court And American Individualism, Gary C. Roberts

Dissertations

The United States Supreme Court occupies an unusual, oftentimes paradoxical position within American democracy. On one hand, it is an institution that seemingly lacks democratic legitimacy, and on the other, it is an institution that dutifully gives meaning to the nation's democratic values. The uniqueness and possibly the grandeur of the American Supreme Court is that it has historically been able to successfully combine these two apparently contradictory aspects in such a manner as to expand upon the nation's traditional sense of individualism--the whole notion of an individual's inalienable right to life, liberty, and property.

Using legal case analysis, the …

Differentiation Of The Causal Characteristics And Influences Of Virtual Reality And The Effects On Learning At A Science Exhibit, Arlene De Strulle Edd

Dissertations

Within the context of the informal science center, exhibits are the main interface for public learning. Essential to the success of a science center is how well exhibits model effective strategies for learning. Virtual Reality (VR) technology with its flexible, adaptive, multimedia, and immersive-learning capabilities is emerging for use by science centers in exhibits; however, research on learning in virtual environments at exhibits is scarce. To support the future development of VR science exhibits it is critical to investigate VR's pedagogical value and effects on science learning. Research investigated the Smoke & Mirrors VR exhibit at the Reuben H. Fleet …

What Kinds Of Adolescent Leaders Are Hiding In Newbery Books?, Carol Jasperse Lautenbach

Dissertations

Though adolescent leadership is worth developing, often it is not addressed effectively in the general middle school curriculum. This study addresses adolescent leadership by describing and discussing eight major leadership categories and 38 subcategories found in seventeen representative Newbery Award-winning books. The sample was chosen using a multiple-step process and contained fictional stories with adolescent protagonists in realistic situations. Content analysis was used to quantify and analyze the leadership themes; a code book was used to organize data. Occurrence of each sub-category was ranked for prevalence within each book. These rankings form the basis for the analysis of findings which …

Counselors’ Perceptions Of The Effectiveness Of Career Education Programs In Assisting High School Students When Making Career Decisions, Sandra L. Roberts Standish

Dissertations

In 1997, the Michigan Department of Career Development unveiled the Michigan Career Preparation System, which provided guidelines and funds for school districts to offer career education opportunities for students. Since high school counselors are oftentimes viewed as the primary provider of careerinformation to students, this study examined their perceptions of Michigan's Career Preparation System and the impact this initiative has had on studentsand educators. To gather this information, a 13-question survey was designed and distributed to a randomly selected group of high school counselors. Theresearch also provided a framework for understanding all of the components of both the Michigan Comprehensive …

The Social Construction Of Rape Research: Exploring Epistemologies And Evaluating Methods, Edith M. Fisher

Dissertations

The most widely known national study of rape found that one in four college-age women has been the victim of rape or attempted rape. Conservative writers have criticized that study for overestimating the possible prevalence of rape in the U.S. My research uses more sensitive instruments and administration techniques, seeking to estimate the prevalence of rape in the lives of women at a large midwestern public university. I address questions about the validity of previous rape research and compare methods of collecting sexual violence information by questionnaire (322 mailed surveys and 300 interviewer-administered surveys). Additional interviews with 62 of the …

Recipes For Reform: Americanization And Foodways In Chicago Settlement Houses, 1890-1920, Stephanie J. Jass

Dissertations

During the late nineteenth century as tens of thousands of immigrants flooded American cities, public debate among reformers--who tended to be middle-class, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants--began to center on the best ways to assimilate these foreigners into American society. Although some Americanization groups stressed language and citizenship training, two major reform movements focused on foodways as an important tool of assimilation.

This dissertation examines how both the home economics and settlement house movements attempted to Americanize ethnic food practices. It describes why reformers saw foodways as a viable and meaningful avenue for reform, as well as the varied responses that reformers …

The Interactions Between An Orthodox Christian Worldview And Environmental Attitudes And Beliefs; For The Purpose Of Developing Better Instructional Practice In Support Of Environmental/Ecological Attitudes And Knowledge, Robert S. Keys

Dissertations

Students bring with them to the classroom a wide variety of beliefs and attitudes about the environment and its associated issues. One worldview belief structure prominently discussed in ecological discussions is the worldview of orthodox Christianity. This study uses both quantitative and qualitative measures to analyze the degree to which the orthodox Christian worldview of students influences their environmental attitudes and beliefs. Surveys were conducted with 281 undergraduate pre-service elementary teaching students enrolled in a science methods course to determine the degree to which orthodox Christian worldviews and ecological worldviews interact with one another. From this pool of students, 16 …

The Politics Of Hiv/Aids And Implications For Democracy In Kenya, Wambuii Henry Kiragu

Dissertations

Democratic consolidation in newly transitioned democracies has traditionally been attributed to widely accepted political and legal mechanisms, like elections and constitutions. Existing literature on democratization in sub-Saharan Africa is preoccupied with these mechanisms as prime indicators for democratic takeoff in specific countries. Hardly any attention has been paid to other less openly political mechanisms, such as the response to external shocks, as potential sources of institutional development that could advance democratic practices.

Yet national response to any external shock can entail a host of actions with potentially far ranging political implications, including transformation of the form and means of political …

Islam And Democracy: An Empirical Examiniation Of Muslims' Political Culture, Moataz Bellah Mohamed Abdel Fattah

Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the following empirical puzzle: do the attitudes of ordinary educated Muslims stand as an obstacle toward the adoption of democracy? This research question calls for empirical/behavioral methodological tools that bring into focus contemporary Muslims' attitudes rather than ancient jurists' contributions. In other words, the dissertation shifts attention from ancient Islamic texts to contemporary Muslims' mindsets through written and web-bases surveys in 32 Muslim societies.

At the aggregate level, Muslim societies perplex with two types of sub-cultures: the culture of "dictator, but..." and the culture of "democracy-as-a-must." The former is the sub-couture of two groups of Muslims: …

Assessing The Gender Component In Coronary Heart Disease; A Comparative Analysis Of Osteopathic And Allopathic Rural Physicians' Medical Approaches To Diagnosing And Treating Female Coronary Heart Disease, Victoria S. Curtis

Dissertations

Heart disease is the number one killer among women in the United States. This dissertation examines how the knowledge base of rural physicians affects his/her approach to diagnosing female heart disease. It compares the knowledge base of doctors trained in osteopathic medicine with doctors trained in allopathic medicine to determine if knowledge base affects how women are diagnosed in comparison with men. Current data suggests that a male model of recognized heart symptoms is most often used to diagnose heart disease, that women and men experience different cardiac symptoms, and those physicians more often overlook and/or misdiagnose women presenting with …

On Similarity Measures For Cluster Analysis, Ahmed Najeeb Khalaf Albatineh

Dissertations

This study discusses the relationship between measures of similarity which quantify the agreement between two clusterings of the same set of data. This study identifies a family [Special characters omitted.] of similarity measures which are of a special form and attain a maximum value of 1 and becomes identical when corrected for chance agreement. In particular, this study proves that the similarity measures of Rand (R), Hubert (H), and Czekanowski (CZ) are identical when corrected for chance agreement. It also proves that the measures of McConnaughey (MC) and Kulczynski (K) are identical when corrected for chance agreement. Moreover, if the …

Child Welfare And Devolving Federalism: An Analysis Of The Effects Of Federal Funding Schemes On Selected Child Welfare Outcomes In Michigan, Timothy J. Kangas

Dissertations

Child abuse and neglect has become a pervasive problem across the United States. Between 1985 and 1995 the foster care population in the United States grew by 79%, with costs soaring into the billions. During the mid-1990s, in an effort to address this issue, the federal government shifted from using a funding scheme identified with a traditional model of federalism to one identified with devolving federalism. In Michigan, the focus of this research, this shift in approaches occurred through the issuance of block grant funding for child welfare programming. The intent of this shift was to decentralize elements of the …

Taiwanese Female Counselors’ Experiences Of Managing Work And Family Roles And Responsibilities, Joy Yuyin Huang

Dissertations

Mental health professionals work in emotionally demanding environments when they work with clients who have emotional problems and interpersonal conflicts. Self-care and managing family and work responsibilities are concerns of great importance for mental health professionals to maintain quality in their services. This is of special concern for Asian female counselors who play important supportive roles for their families. As a result, Asian female counselorsnot only work with clients but also assume heavy family responsibilities, yet there is a dearth of literature on this specific group (Leong, 2002; Saso, 1999; Lee, 1998).

This qualitative study using grounded theory methods explored …

Deconstructing Fordism: Legacies Of The Ford Sociological Department, Georgios Paris Loizides

Dissertations

Institutional theories of organizations state that organizations reflect society's wider values and norms. Less attention has been placed on the questions of whether and how private interest organizations influence wider societal values and norms. This study examines archival material, as well as published primary and secondary sources, relating to the history of the Ford Motor Company, in particular its Sociological Department, in an effort to assess the company's progressive era project to instill in its workforce a particular set of values and attitudes, which were seen by Ford as healthy, and appropriate. Though we are used to seeing Henry Ford …