Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Indexing For The Online Catalog, Arthur B. Chitty

Publications and Research

The proliferation of online public access catalogs (OPACs) requires some systematic rationale for the comparative evaluation of their designs. Considered as an indexing application, the OPAC can be analyzed by three features: the varieties of bibliographic data processed, the kinds of indexes constructed, and the ways in which the indexes are searched. No one configuration applies to every library research project with equal efficacy or likelihood of satisfying queries. However, the rationale proposed can compare and evaluate alternative library computer catalogs in terms of the library's understanding of the relationship between the library's collections and their use.

Silencing In Public Schools, Michelle Fine

Publications and Research

Demands for silencing signify a terror of words, a fear of talk. This essay examines these demands as they echoed through a comprehensive public high school in New York City. The silencing resounded in words and in their absence; the demands emanated from the New York City Board of Education, book publishers, corporate sponsors, religious institutions, administrators, teachers, parents, and students. In the odd study of what's not said in public schools, one must be curious about whom silencing protects, but vigilant about how silencing students and their communities undermines fundamentally the vision of education as empowerment (Freire 1985; Shor …

Israeli, Palestinian And Egyptian Explanations Of Political Actions In The Middle East, Bethamie Horowitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated how people affiliated with different parties in an international conflict understand their own actions and the actions of their adversaries. Using data gathered in the Middle East in 1982, the study examined the explanations offered by 1336 Israeli Jews, Palestinians (living in Israel) and Egyptians to three political events in the Middle East: 'Israeli Air Force conducts a raid on Beirut,' 'Palestinians attack a bus on the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway,' and 'A peace treaty is announced between Israel and Egypt.'

The study, an exploratory analysis, was carried out in a sequence of stages. First, the analysis involved …

The Impact Of Presentence Investigations On Plea Bargained Dispositions In Kings County Supreme Court, Joseph G. Enright

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the presentence function of probation from an historical and empirical perspective which argues that the purported diminution of the role of the presentence report (PSR) in the sentencing process–as a result of sentence bargaining–is more reflective of a prevailing disenchantment with the rehabilitative ideal than any thoroughly considered, reliable validation of the PSR's dispensibility. It is demonstrated, through a review of the literature, that poorly conceived, polemically biased empirical research has helped to perpetuate the notion that these reports have little value. A survey of studies and inquiries conducted in New York over the past twenty years …

Precursors Of Creativity: Metaphor, Symbolic Play And Categorization In Early Childhood, Jay A. Seitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Four and 6-year-olds were presented with seven different types of metaphorical relationships in both pictures and words. The core task consisted of a metaphor comprehension task of identical triads (target, nonliteral match, literal match) comprising perceptual/color, perceptual/shape, physiognomic, cross-modal, collectional, psychophysical and taxonomic matches. Children matched items based either on nonliteral similarity or literal contiguity. A series of symbolic play tasks were given to half the subjects at each age group and were hypothesized to facilitate the comprehension of metaphor because of an underlying structural similarity common to systems of reference invoked in both the act of metaphor comprehension and …

Social Security, Savings, And Labor Supply Of The Elderly In Japan, Tetsuji Yamada

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study examines the controversial, inconsistent empirical results of the effect of social security on personal savings and analyzes the interdependency in the context of social security between the personal savings and labor supply behavior of elderly workers.

Very few studies in this field have been done, and it has not theoretically and empirically been accomplished yet in Japan. Time-series data are used for 1946-1982, and the methods of technique are ordinary least squares and a simultaneous-equation model in the life cycle framework.

The study finds that social security affects personal savings and that the benefit effect dominates the retirement …

Puerto Rico: Colonialism Revisited, Sherrie Baver

Publications and Research

Because Puerto Rico is not systematically consulted on issues central to its development and because this situation has become so obvious to all island officials during the last decade, elites across the entire Puerto Rican political spectrum felt pressured to ""come out of the colonial closet," tentatively in August 1977 and forthrightly in 1978.3 Every summer since, spokespersons from all political parties have gone before the UN Decolonization Committee to protest the status quo in Puerto Rico. Before 1977, only Puerto Rican Independentistas (who win only a small percentage in island elections), Cuba, and the Soviet Union had labeled Puerto …

Evaluation Issues In A Quasi-Experiment On Teaching Thinking Skills, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

Comments on the method used by R. J. Herrnstein et al (see record 1987-08654-001) to evaluate an educational intervention that was designed to advance the thinking skills of 7th graders. It would seem preferable to adopt multiple linear regression techniques, rather than the t-test, as the chief analytic tool.

The Experience Of Public Art In Urban Settings, Roberta Degnore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The sine qua non for an artwork in the urban realm is neither its judged "goodness" nor the ability of audiences to perceive it "correctly," but is the total experience the work contributes to as part of the fabric of interlocking meanings that places have in people's lives.

In urban settings, the physical attributes and private intentionality of a work do not stand alone. As carefully as an artist installs his/her pieces in a gallery, the same concern for their working together and with their total environment must be applied to artworks in complex public settings, where choice to be …