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University Of Texas At Tyler Catalog, 2014 - 2015, University Of Texas At Tyler

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University Of Texas At Tyler Course Catalog, 2014 - 2015, University Of Texas At Tyler

Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Emotional Bond Between The Creator And The Avatar: Changes In Behavioral Intentions To Engage In Alcohol-Related Traffic Risk Behaviors, Hokyung Kim

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examines the joint impact of relationship with one's avatar and negative consequences to the avatar on changing behavioral intentions (CBI) in terms of alcohol-impaired driving. Avatars are users' visual self-representation in a virtual world, and play a major role to build the users' digital identity. One hundred eleven participants volunteered to participate in several experimental conditions where the degree of choice of avatar features and the degree of active control of the avatar were manipulated in Second Life, an immersive 3D virtual environment. Participants who were allowed to customize their avatar viewed their avatar more similar and …

Perceptions Of Control In Midwifery Assisted Childbirth: A Qualitative Examination Of The Midwifery Assisted Experience Of Childbearing, Sarah Jordan Keels

Theses and Dissertations

This study looks to uncover some of the reasons that the sub-group of women who give birth outside of a hospital setting, and the midwives who serve them, choose to have an alternative birth plan and are willing to undergo social criticism for their decision. This is a qualitative analysis based on interview data with women who utilized midwifery care and midwives themselves. In-depth interview questions focus on the decision to use a midwife, definitions of control in the prenatal and birthing experience, and any kind of facilitation midwifery is seen to give expectant mothers in relation to these concepts. …

Clarissa's Suffering: Theorizing Sympathy And Physical Pain In The Eighteenth Century, Audrey Hungerpiller

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines theories of pain in the eighteenth century, and what it meant to sympathize with the pain of another. I begin briefly with the theories of Descartes and his adherents before focusing on David Hartley and John Locke. Physicians and natural philosophers of the period understood pain as a pure mechanism of the nervous system, confined to the tubelike fibers that run through the body. Naturally everyone feels pain by some means, whether illness or injury, so men ought to be able to sympathize with the afflictions of others. Yet, according to Adam Smith in The Theory of …

Professional Educators Of Iowa Member Perspectives About Iowa State Education Association And National Education Association Membership And Political Activities, Melissa Kay Reade

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

As Moe (2011) contended, “The teachers unions have tremendous influence over the nation’s schools, yet they have been poorly studied” (p. 18). The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the attitudes, beliefs, and values of current Professional Educators of Iowa (PEI) members who either opted to join, discontinue, or bypass membership with Iowa State Education Association/National Education Association (ISEA/NEA). Specifically, this study aimed to understand the factors that influenced their membership decisions. Lastly, this study further explored the degree to which former ISEA/NEA members were aware, involved, and aligned with NEA political activities and how the political activities …

Oldtimers & Newcomers In Collective Action, Stefanie R. Chamberlain

Theses and Dissertations

Most work on groups facing collective action assumes that group membership is static, or fixed. Yet static membership is rare, with members joining and leaving groups. In this thesis, I propose to explore how the presence of newcomers to groups affects group coordination. Past research has shown an overall negative effect of newcomers on group contributions. The proposed thesis attempts to further establish the effect by determining whether newcomers, oldtimers, or both are responsible for the declining cooperation in groups. While the empirical component is focused solely on establishing who is responsible for driving down cooperation rates in dynamic groups, …

Intraindividual Personality Change: Situational Influences, Patterns Of Change, And Frequency-Based Measurement, Carol Tweten

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

A large amount of research supports the idea that little change in personality occurs over time (e.g., Caspi & Roberts, 2001). However, changes in an individual’s personality across different situations, known as intraindividual, or within-person, variability, has not received nearly as much empirical attention, in part due to the difficulties inherent in measuring personality across situations. The present study evaluated a measure of within-person variability called frequency-based measurement by comparing it with situational personality expression. The study involved two phases: a one-time measure of trait personality using frequency-based measurement and a five day experience sampling (ESM) study involving repeated measures …

Bayesian Analysis Of Continuous Curve Functions, Wen Cheng

Theses and Dissertations

We consider Bayesian analysis of continuous curve functions in 1D, 2D and 3D spaces. A fundamental feature of the analysis is that it is invariant under a simultaneous warping/re-parameterization of all target curves, as well as translation, rotation and scale of each individual if necessary. We introduce Bayesian models based on a special curve representation named Square Root Velocity Function (SRVF) introduced by Srivastava et al. (2011, IEEE PAMI). A Gaussian process model for the SRVFs of curves is proposed, and suitable prior models such as the Dirichlet distribution are employed for modeling the warping function as a cumulative distribution …

Effectiveness Of Preschool Lessons For Active Youngsters (Play) Curriculum On The Gross Motor Development And Physical Activity Level Of Preschool Children, Karyn K. Finn

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Presumably, energy balance can help to stabilize and ultimately reverse the rising rates of childhood obesity. Research findings generally point to a positive association between preschool children’s motor skill competence and their level of physical activity. This study was conducted as part of Project PLAY (Preschool Lessons for Active Youngsters) to objectively evaluate Project PLAY curriculum in order to provide childcare centers with an outcome-based curriculum that can improve motor skill development and positively affect physical activity level. This study used a quasi-experimental, cross over design with pre-mid-post assessment of motor skills and physical activity. The study was conducted with …

Accessing Law: An Empirical Study Exploring The Influence Of Legal Research Medium, Stefan H. Krieger, Katrina Fischer Kuh

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

The legal profession is presently engaged in an uncontrolled experiment. Attorneys now locate and access legal authorities primarily through electronic means. Although this shift to an electronic research medium radically changes how attorneys discover and encounter law, little empirical work investigates impacts from the shift to an electronic medium.

This Article presents the results of one of the most robust empirical studies conducted to date comparing research processes using print and electronic sources. While the study presented in this Article was modest in scope, the extent and type of the differences that it reveals are notable. Some of the observed …

Judging Similarity, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Irina D. Manta, Tess Wilkinson‐Ryan

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Copyright law’s requirement of substantial similarity requires a court to satisfy itself that a defendant’s copying, even when shown to exist as a factual matter, is quantitatively and qualitatively enough to render it actionable as infringement. By the time a jury reaches the question of substantial similarity, however, the court has usually heard and analyzed a good deal of evidence: about the plaintiff, the defendant, the creativity involved, the process through which the work was created, the reasons for which the work was produced, the defendant’s own creative efforts and behavior, and on occasion the market effects of the defendant’s …

A Game Changer For The Political Economy Of Economic Development Incentives, Stephen Ellis, Grant Hayden, Cynthia Rogers

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

State and local governments have embraced their authority to offer economic development incentives for the purpose of attracting, retaining, or enhancing economic activity within their borders. Collectively, these programs represent an enormous, but largely overlooked, transfer of wealth from public entities to private firms. The increasing use of economic development incentives runs counter to the guidance offered by academic researchers. With their proliferation comes the increasing need for accountability in the decision-making process. We consider whether the duty of care standard used in corporate governance should be applied to the public decision-making context regarding economic development incentives.

Analyzing Commercial Video Game Instruction Through The Lens Of Instructional Design, Susan E. Copp, Rebecca L. Fischer, Tian Luo, David R. Moore, Seann Dikkers

STEMPS Faculty Publications

This paper will examine how Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction (1992) may appear, perhaps inadvertently, within commercial games that guide the user from novice to expert player. By employing a qualitative artifact analysis methodology, we examine a popular action adventure video game to determine if game designers encourage players to build game expertise by employing similar events to Gagne’s instructional design model. We demonstrate that our artifact of analysis does consistently employ Gagne’s events, though often in a manner unique to a digitally mediated space. We conclude that an experiential game setting has the potential to be a platform for …

Investigating Estimation: Influences Of Time And Confidence Of Urban Middle School Students, Robert Q. Berry Iii, Melva R. Grant, Sueanne E. Mckinney, Clair Berube

STEMPS Faculty Publications

This study sought to determine the estimation processes used by 10 urban middle school students for solving computational estimation problems, and if there was a difference in the estimation processes utilized for straight computation and application problems. An adapted model of the Accessing Computational Estimation Test (ACE) was used to determine the estimation strategies employed by the subjects within timed and un-timed settings. Qualitative methods were used to analyze the data. The timed ACE tests were administered using an interview format and included computation and application problems. The findings indicated that there were no differences in estimation processes for straight …

State Responsibility For Gender Stereotyping, Barbara Stark

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have recently re-discovered Justice Ruth Bader Ginburg’s early anti-stereotyping work. As Cary Franklin notes, Justice Ginsburg’s approach "was grounded not in a commitment to eradicating sex classifications from the law, but in a far richer theory of equal protection involving constitutional limitations on the state’s power to enforce sex-role stereotypes." Some of these scholars believe that this approach holds great promise for issues at the "frontiers of equal protection law" such as same-sex marriage and the work-family conflict. As Ginsburg herself has come to realize, however, anti-stereotyping is only the beginning. This Article explains why anti-stereotyping is insufficient, what …

Teachers' Experiences With Disengagement In Physical Education Classes At Secondary School Level In The Perth Metropolitan Area, Nuno Matos Oliveira

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Students’ disengagement from school has been one of the major concerns in educational research (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). According to researchers (Alexander et al., 1997; Finn & National Center for Education Statistics, 1993; Finn & Rock, 1997; Finn & Voelkl, 1993; Fredricks & Blumenfeld et al., 2004) the more disengaged the students are, the more likely they will be to fail academically and ultimately drop out. Although researchers have already identified several risk factors that can influence students’ engagement (Fulton, 2007; Lee & Burkam, 2003; Newmann, 1992), very few studies have explored teachers’ views of this educational issue. The …

Evolutionary Approaches For Feature Selection In Biological Data, Vinh Q. Dang

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Data mining techniques have been used widely in many areas such as business, science, engineering and medicine. The techniques allow a vast amount of data to be explored in order to extract useful information from the data. One of the foci in the health area is finding interesting biomarkers from biomedical data. Mass throughput data generated from microarrays and mass spectrometry from biological samples are high dimensional and is small in sample size. Examples include DNA microarray datasets with up to 500,000 genes and mass spectrometry data with 300,000 m/z values. While the availability of such datasets can aid in …

The Perceived Personal Characteristics Of Entrepreneurial Leaders, Ling He

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The concept of entrepreneurial leadership has attracted growing interest from leadership scholars but research is still in an early stage and empirical studies are rare. This thesis explores this new concept in an empirical study of the personal characteristics of entrepreneurial leaders (ELs). The study is underpinned by the “common characteristics” model in which ELs have characteristics of both entrepreneurs and leaders. Semi-structured interviews and a short questionnaire were used to explore business owners’ and corporate managers’ perceptions of the personal characteristics of ELs. Responses were summarised with thematic analysis and descriptive statistics.

The findings show participants perceived EL as …

The Australian Football League And The Closet, Andrew Douglas

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis examines the complete absence of openly gay males from the ranksof the professional players in the Australian Football League (AFL). It seeks to explain this absence in the context of the modern gay rights movement. incontemporary Australian society. It compares and contrasts the effects of thismovement on both the AFL and other mainstream Australian social institutions.

Over more than four decades, the gay rights movement has effected a number of social changes. These changes include both specific legal reforms and more general trends such as the increasing social visibility of gay men across a range of mainstream institutions …

The Role Of Strangers In Victorian Novels: A Psychoanalytical Study Of Their Repressions, Functions And Aspirations, Mohammad Ahmed Al-Abdulrazaq

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The aim of this study is to examine the stranger characters in three Victorian Novels, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. The exploration of the characters is based on the analysis of their psyche to understand how they are utilized by the Victorian writers. The study highlights how the fictional strangers can assist in the course of the action of the novel and function as a stimulus by which the actions and thoughts develop plausibly and feasibly. Utilizing the views of Freud, Erikson and others the study will allow for …

Understanding And Building Resilience With Art: A Socio-Ecological Approach, Meagan Shand

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Resilience is a widely researched phenomenon, it means different things to different people and is perceived and measured according to the theoretical lens being applied. The following thesis reviews the theoretical development of resilience that has led to contemporary understandings, to establish a platform for the research topic - understanding and building resilience with Art. Narrative research methods are combined with art processes to illuminate the stories of eight culturally diverse women participating in a community based mental health art program, in Western Australia. Fifteen resilience themes emerged from the collective experience, and are presented in a socio-ecological framework to …

The Creation And Validation Of A Youth Fundamental Hitting Scale: The Assessment Of Youth Baseball And Softball Hitting Fundamentals And The Perceived Psychological Barriers To Hitting A Pitched Ball, Andrew Walsh

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The primary purpose of the thesis was to create a hitting scale for youth players that assess the fundamentals of a baseball swing. Secondly, the purpose of this thesis was to determine the interactions between the changes in anxiety, perceived competence and fear variables have with actual hitting competence over a four week sport specific training program.

Acute Physiological Effects And Perceived Enjoyment Of A Single Bout Of Aerobic Interval And Continuous Moderate-Intensity Cycling In Overweight And Obese Individuals, Fujie Koh

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Aerobic interval training, a form of high intensity interval training, is commonly prescribed to both the general and clinical populations. However, the acute physiological effects from a single bout of aerobic interval session are not fully understood. In training studies, these acute physiological effects may confound actual training adaptations when they occur following the final training session [1]. Furthermore, while recreationally active men perceived aerobic interval training to be more enjoyable than continuous moderate-intensity exercise [2], the preference of overweight and obese individuals has not been extensively researched. Since overweight and obese individuals tend to have lower exercise tolerance, it …

Understanding And Improving Pacing Strategies During Standard Distance Triathlons In Age Group Athletes, Sam Shi Xuan Wu

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Pacing is an integral aspect of performance during all exercise, including multi-sport events such as triathlon. However, to date, the optimal pacing strategies to adopt over an entire triathlon, as well as during each specific discipline (i.e. swim, cycle and run), is not well understood. Therefore, the primary purpose of this thesis was to identify and understand current pacing strategies adopted by highly performing triathletes across different triathlon distances. This research aids in identifying pacing strategies that may improve overall performance during triathlon.

In the first study, the influence of sex and race distance on the age-related declines in the …

Tasha: A Practice-Based Problematisation Of Australian Comedy Cinema’S Representation Of Gender, Family And Nationhood, Vanessa Barnett

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Between 2007 and 2012, 140 fictional feature films were financed with the assistance of Australian film funding bodies. Of these 140 films, only 31 featured female protagonists and of these 31 films, only 8 were comedies (see Appendix B). These figures show statistically, Tasha, the creative film component of this research project, is not a typical Australian comedy film; it is the story of Tasha, an unemployed girl from Girrawheen in her early twenties, who has lost her sense of identity. As Australian films such as Little Fish¸ Candy, Jedda and Muriel’s Wedding would suggest, this is certainly …

Learning From The Experts: Qualitative Study Of The Lived Experience Of Mental Illness, Zdenka Bartova

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Severe mental illness has a profound effect on the affected individuals yet it does not necessarily prevent them from leading a meaningful and fulfilling life, and therefore recovering. Recovery has received a great interest in clinical and consumer research yet little is known about how those individuals who do not primarily identify with recovery respond to the concept and come to accept it as something that is personally meaningful. Using a qualitative approach following the principles of Gadamer’s (1975) hermeneutics, the present study explored people’s subjective experience of mental illness with the aim of identifying factors related to their views …

Feeling The Fleshed Body: The Aftermath Of Childhood Rape [Thesis], Brenda Downing

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The point of propulsion for this research is my raped and censured body with its somatic aftermath narrative. This doctoral research project is a feminist and creative investigation that sought to uncover and articulate the long term somatic impacts of childhood rape as they manifest in the adult female body. I employed a multi-modal, complementary, and embodied methodology using a combination of autoethnography, somatic inquiry, writing-as-inquiry, and performance-making-as inquiry. In addition to my autoethnographic explorations, I gathered information from other women raped in childhood, as well as information from women’s healthcare professionals. Drawing on the autoethnographic and participant information gathered, …

Role Of Physical Exercise In Reducing Depression And Improving Mental Health In Cancer Survivors, Gregory Levin

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Cancer survivors are more than twice as likely as the general population to suffer the debilitating effects of depression. This comorbid condition is associated with several negative consequences, such as reduction in compliance with cancer treatments, and hastened mortality. Recent research has examined the therapeutic effect of exercise on depression and reported excellent results of similar magnitude to those achieved with pharmacotherapy or psychological intervention. However, no research, to date, has examined the effectiveness of exercise on reducing depression in depressed cancer survivors. In order to address this important question this thesis reviewed previous literature in the area of cancer …

Religion, Heritage, And Power： Everyday Life In Contemporary China, Asan Xue

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Based on an ethnographic study of the religious life of ordinary people in the town of Dongpu, this research explores the relationships between: religion and state power; Chinese ritual (li, 礼/禮) tradition and Christian culture; and religion and intangible cultural heritage in contemporary China.

This research found that both the practitioners of Chinese rituals and the Christian community deploy tactics to resist and negotiate with the hegemonic official culture through spatial and religious practices in their everyday life. Chinese ritual practices dedicated to deities and ancestors are defined as idol worship in the doctrine of Christianity and denigrated …