Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Effects Of Job Characteristics And Task Decomposition On The Estimation Of The Dollar-Value Of Performance, Robert P. Delprino

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to investigate the influence of job characteristics and structuring aids on the accuracy and acceptance of managers' estimates of the standard deviation of job performance in dollars (i.e., SD_y). The job characteristics consisted of critical incidents of work behaviors and existing performance appraisal dimensions. The structuring aids consisted of full algorithm and partial algorithm procedures. In addition, a global estimation procedure was included in the design and served as a control condition. Participants were 96 nursing managers. Through the use of questionnaires, the managers provided dollar-value estimates of the value of low, …

Information Technology And Wealth: Cybernetics, History And Economics, Elin Whitney-Smith

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Capitalism developed where and when it did because there was high information access. There was high information access because of a major advance in information technology--the press. Where the technology was not controlled by the "powers that be" there was economic growth and a shift in the entire social structure. Where it was controlled there was no structural change and there was economic ruin. The development of capitalism is a major step change in economic growth. It is also a major change in the way people organize themselves into groups.

Major step changes in the growth and in the organization …

The Effects Of Training And Feedback Format On Reactions To In-Basket Feedback And On In-Basket Performance, Michael G. Fedorko

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of training and feedback format on reactions to in-basket feedback and on in-basket performance. Performance was evaluated with a 2 (Training) x 3 (Feedback) x 2 (In-Basket) x 5 (Dimension) repeated measures factorial design. Reactions were evaluated with a 2 (Training) x 3 (Feedback) x 2 (Questionnaire) repeated measures factorial design. The Training factor was comprised of frame-of-reference training (designed to prepare the recipient to receive the feedback) and a control condition (a lecture on Mintzberg's managerial role classification system). The Feedback factor was comprised of written feedback, oral feedback, …

The Effect Of Age Misreporting In China On The Calculation Of Mortality Rates At Very High Ages, Ansley J. Coale, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

When mortality rates by age are calculated from recorded deaths and enumerated populations, rates at higher ages are typically in error because of misstated ages. Mortality rates for China in 1981 have been calculated from the number of deaths in 1981 in each household recorded in the 1982 census, and from the census population back-projected one year. Because age was determined from date of birth, and because persons of the Chinese culture have very precise knowledge of date of birth, the mortality rates even at high ages should be unusually accurate. This expectation is fulfilled for most of China, but …

Whispers In The Golden Silence: Harry F. Byrd, Sr., John F. Kennedy, And Virginia Democrats In The 1960 Presidential Election, James R. Sweeney

History Faculty Publications

In the election of 1960, Richard M. Nixon carried Virginia, the third consecutive victory for a Republican ticket in the strongly Democratic state. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr., the conservative Democratic power broker of Virginia, maintained what became known as a "golden silence," failing to endorse John F. Kennedy and privately working to ensure Nixon's victory. Byrd's stance angered many state Democrats, and by 1964 they broke the senator's power over the party, passing a resolution endorsing President Lyndon B. Johnson over Byrd's objections.

A Comparison Of Decision-Making Variables Used By Dual-Career Couples, Margaret K. Conrad

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The increasing number of households transitioning from traditional oneworker families to dual-career families has created complex issues for the individual, the family, employers, and society in general. Learning more about how these dual-career couples make decisions will help provide a better capability to tailor counseling needs to these individuals, as well as guide policy for employers. This study examined 115 dual-career spouses from four different occupational groups: Air Force, Army, Navy, and civilian organizations. The participants consisted of 54 husbands and 61 wives who completed a questionnaire designed for this study. The survey measured 12 decision-making variables identified in a …

Interaction Between Amphetamine And Ethanol On Amphetamine-Produced Conditioned Place Preference, Cheryl Pelphrey-Weigand

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Male Long-Evans rats were conditioned 6 days, alternating drug and non-drug conditions, using injections of .6 mg/kg d-amphetamine, amphetamine plus 60mg/kg ethanol, or amphetamine plus 120 mg/kg ethanol. These injections were given in a specific side of the shuttlebox to assess the development of a place preference or aversion. The amount of time spent in the drug-paired side was analyzed on 2 non-drugged test days. Rats spent significantly more time in the drug-paired side on Test Day 1 than on Test Day 2. When the ethanol groups were combined, these rats spent significantly more time in the drug-paired side than …

Integrated Control Of Thermally Distorted Large Space Antennas, Robert H. Tolson

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Studies on controlling the thermal distortion of large space antennae have generally investigated a single orbital position and have optimized actuator locations based on minimizing the RMS surface deviation from the original parabolic shape. One study showed the benefits of directly using far zone electric field characteristics as the performance measure; but, this approach resulted in a nonlinear programming problem. The objective of the current study is to develop an approach to designing a control system that (1) recognizes the time dependence of the distortion and (2) controls variables that are directly related to far field performance in a quadratic …

An Assessment Of The Utilization Of Permanent And Temporary Classrooms As It Relates To Cost And Efficiency In Selected School Divisions, E. Carlton Bowyer

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

In the mid-1900s there were over eighty thousand public school buildings in the United States housing approximately thirty-nine million pupils. Many were constructed thirty or forty years earlier and have approached the end of their useful life without requiring major retrofitting or replacement. Rising construction costs prompt school systems to investigate alternative means of housing rapidly growing student populations. This study traced the historical background of the school facility and the development of school construction relative to the function of education.

The focus of this study was to ascertain the current use of temporary and permanent housing in the fifty …

Relationship Of Dysphoria To The Recall Of Positive Negative And Neutral Words, Sarah Ellen Ware

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study investigated memory and cognitions in dysphoric and non-dysphoric individuals by examining reported thoughts and positive and negative word recall. Participants were female volunteers from Old Dominion University with 24 non-dysphoric subjects and 18 dysphoric subjects. Each subject was asked to read positive and negative life descriptions at separate times. After the descriptions had been read, 23 subjects were asked to suppress the description and 19 subjects were not given these instructions. Subjects then wrote down their thoughts for 6 minutes. Following the writing of thoughts, each subject was then asked to recall freely a list of 30 words. …

George F. Kennan And The Rebuilding Of Japan: The Second Phase Of Occupation Policy, Rhonda S. Beckham

History Theses & Dissertations

As head of the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State, George F. Kennan had the opportunity to implement aspects of the containment policy which he had helped to create. In 1947, Japan became vital to United States national security interests in Asia but was threatened by Communist infiltration because of an unstable political and economic situation promulgated by the initial post-surrender policy immediately after the war. An investigation by Kennan led to the implementation of significant changes which were enumerated in a National Security Council Report. This thesis will examine Kennan's foreign policy philosophy, the containment theory, the …

Body Image And Perceptions Of Body Size Among Black And White College Women, Clifford E. Rucker Iii

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to examine several facets of body image and weight-related concerns among 121 Black and White female college students. This study evaluated body-image using multiple, internally consistent, self-report measures and the use of the body-image silhouettes to assess perceptions of body fatness. Three primary domains assessed in this study were: (a) body-image attitudes, (b) body-image perceptions, and (c) eating behavior and weight concerns. As hypothesized, the Black females held more favorable body-image attitudes than Whites, on both global and weight-related body-image affect, cognitions, and behaviors. Moreover, compared with Whites, the Black women held body-size …

The Relationships Of Body-Image Attitudes To Sexual Functioning And Experiences In A Normal College Population, Jill D. Hangen

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study examined the relationships of body-image attitudes and sexual attitudes, experiences, and functioning in a college population. Sixty-five males and 120 females completed a variety of established self-report measures assessing the constructs under study, as well as two new measures developed in this study. The new measures included (1) The Sexual Experiences and Problems Survey for self-assessment of difficulties in sexual functioning, and (2) The Body Exposure in Sexual Activities Questionnaire to measure self-consciousness and avoidance of body exposure in sexual contexts. Analyses were performed in the data of those predominantly heterosexual subjects who reported a history of sexual …

The Effect Of The Type Of Goal Setting Procedure Task Difficulty And Feedback On Psychomotor Performance, Jennifer Anne Mikulka Fletcher

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The present experiment examined the effect of two levels of task difficulty (easy and difficult), two levels of feedback (feedback and no feedback), and three types of goal setting procedure (participative, assigned, and no goal setting) on performance. To control for effects due to goal difficulty, the assigned goals were yoked to the participative goals. A computerized letter cancellation task was employed to measure subject performance on three dependent variables: the number of correct. letter cancellations, the number of incorrect cancellations, and the reaction time between correct. cancellations ~ The results showed that the number of incorrect cancellations was not …

Perceptions Of Women And Substance Abuse, Marla Harrison

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Sixty-five male and female substance abuse counselors were administered hypothetical scenarios and corresponding questionnaires regarding two types of substance abuse, one separately describing a male and a female cocaine abuser, and the other separately describing a male and a female heroin and alcohol abuser. Differences in perceptions of male and female substance abusers in regards to treatment recommendations and contributing factors among male and female counselors were predicted. Counselors perceived emotional and relationship problems as contributing more to female substance abuse, and male counselors were more likely to recommend group counseling and to perceive character problems as a contr1buting factor …

Comparison Of The Efficacy Of General And Specific Performance Dimensions In An Operational Assessment Center, Wanda J. Campbell

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to compare the effectiveness of three general performance dimensions and 14 specific dimensions on various aspects of rating quality.

The categorization phase of the research tested the hypothesis that categorization accuracy and reliability would be a significantly greater for the general performance dimensions than for the specific dimensions. The results provided partial support for this hypothesis.

The aggregation phase of the research tested the following hypotheses: (1) rating accuracy would be greater when relevant behaviors were displayed with high frequency than when they were displayed with low frequency; (2) rating accuracy would be greater …

Hemispheric Effects Of Verbal Information Processing On Single And Dual Task Performance, Gwendolyn Lorell Pearson

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Several theories have been proposed to predict performance when operators time share tasks. The Hemispheres as Resources Model suggests tasks will be performed efficiently together if each hemisphere allocates resources to one task. The Task Hemispheric Integrity Principle predicts the best dual task performance will be found when the shortest processing route is maintained. The purpose of the present study was to test the single and dual task performance predictions of these two models. The concurrent performance of two verbal tasks was used to compare the importance of ear of attention, hemisphere of processing, response hand and gender on task …

Visual Speech Training Aid For The Deaf, Subhashri Venkat

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A computer-based vowel articulation training aid has been developed. A "continuous" acoustic-phonetic transformation is performed to map speech parameters to a lower dimensionality display space. There are two possible approaches to this transformation problem. The transformation could be either linear or a combination nonlinear/linear. The nonlinear transformation is performed using a multi-layered feedforward neural network with linear output layers. Speech parameters are extracted either from an analog filter bank arrangement (band energies) or by a digital signal processing procedure (Discrete Cosine Transform Coefficients). The speech parameters obtained from both methods correspond to the spectral envelope of the speech signals. The …

Mathews County Shipbuilding Patterns, 1780-1860, Peter Jennings Wrike

History Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the volume and characteristics of a Chesapeake Bay county's shipbuilding activity to assess its impact on American waterborne commerce. The thesis proposes that this county built a significant number of fast sailing vessels in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Previous works on American shipbuilding as well as regional histories have overlooked this county and concentrated on nearby large ports such as Norfolk and Baltimore. This thesis suggests these ports acted more as vessel brokers to the maritime industry than manufacturers and that this county was, among other small bay counties, a major contributor to that …

Validation Of The Human Factors Satisfaction Questionnaire, James Carlopio

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

In order to predict behavior in organizations, it is important to understand and to consider both the individual employee and his/her interaction with the physical work environment. The main purpose of this research was to gather evidence of the validity of the Human Factors Satisfaction Questionnaire (HFSQ) in order to provide a tool with which employees' preceptions of several elements of their physical work environments can be measured. The physical work environment and its relationship to both organization theory and motivation theory is discussed. Evidence of the construct validity of the HFSQ was sought through the administration of the HFSQ …

Interpreting The Personal Orientation Inventory Through The Five-Factor Model, Diane Donald Anderson

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study was designed to determine how the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI; Shostrom, 1974) relates to the Five-Factor Model of Personality. Four self-report personality instruments were employed; the Personal Orientation Inventory, the Comrey Personality Scales (CPS; Comrey, 1970), the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI; Costa & NcCrae, 1988), and the Five-Factor Nodel Adjective Factors (AF,", Costa & NcCrae, 1985b). Data were collected from 128 psychology students aged 18 to 30 years. Scores for the Five Factors were obtained by factor analysis combining responses from the CPS, the NEO-FFI, and the AF. Pearson product-moment intercorrelations were then computed for the Five Factors …

An Explanatory Study Of Maternal Stress And Coping With A Cystic Fibrosis Child, Leslie G. Potter

Ellmer School of Nursing Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the concept of coping with a cystic fibrosis (CF) child and to define coping strategies from the perspective of the mother. The research design was based upon a phenomenological approach with analysis of transcribed, semi-structured interviews with mothers of CF children. A purposive sample of eight mothers with CF children were interviewed to explore the maternal CF experience. Each interview was tape recorded and followed up with a phone call to allow the mothers to add additional information, if so desired. Data analysis consisted of reviewing each typed, verbatim transcript to categorize …

Job Satisfaction And Retention: Outcomes Since Implementation Of Three Scheduling Options, Katherine Marie Newnam

Ellmer School of Nursing Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this descriptive study was to determine if flexible scheduling options influenced retention and job satisfaction of 109 full time registered staff nurses within a selected hospital setting. The Anticipated Turnover Model, developed by Hinshaw and Atwood (1984) provided the theoretical framework for the study. Perceived job satisfaction was measured by the Nursing Job Satisfaction Scale (Hinshaw & Atwood, 1984). The Anticipated Turnover Scale (Hinshaw & Atwood, 1984) measured the possibility of voluntary termination by sample respondents. The respondents were divided into three groups according to three schedule options: Group 1, 12 hour, weekend only (Baylor); Group 2, …

Health Locus Of Control, Sexual Self-Concept, Self-Efficacy And The Contraceptive Behavior Of College Students, Lorraine Kime Perkins

Ellmer School of Nursing Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the following study was to determine whether contraceptive use could be predicted from health locus of control, contraceptive self-efficacy, and sexual self-concept scores in a selected group of single college students ages 18-24. In order to better understand contraceptive behaviors, it is desirable to determine which personality variables may influence contraceptive behavior in young adults. A sample of 122 single undergraduate college students, both male and female, ages 18-24, completed a self-reported questionnaire including tools to measure health locus of control, contraceptive self-efficacy, and sexual self-concept, as well as demographic data. The participants were divided into two …

The Truman Administration, Israel, And Containment In The Middle East 1945-1952, Leslie Tarbutton

History Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines United States policy towards Israel from 1948 to 1952 to determine the extent to which the support given to Israel during the Truman administration reflected the major United States policy goal in the Middle East, the containment of the Soviet Union.

Sources used in this thesis include: archival material; printed collections of documents; memoirs; and secondary sources.

The Truman administration pursued containment in the Middle East by cooperating with Great Britain to improve the economic and military well-being of the Arab states so they could resist any Soviet attempts to dominate the region. However, domestic political pressure …

Relationships Between Early Mother-Infant Interaction And Later Patterns Of Attachment, Christine Oakes Work

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study investigates the relationships between initiative and responsive attachment behaviors exchanged between mothers and infants in a free play laboratory observation, and later pattern of attachment. Pearson product-moment correlations revealed significant intercorrelations between frequencies of the different attachment behaviors studied. Factor analysis revealed seven factors, three of which were predictive of attachment security through main or interaction effects. High frequencies of infant eye contact in response to maternal initiations significantly predicted later insecure attachment. Attachment security could also be predicted from frequency rates of infant-initiated proximity seeking and vocalization, and maternal responsive non-parallel body contact. When infant gender was …

An Application Of The Investment Model For Examining The Effects Of Commitment, Self-Efficacy, And Goal Difficulty On Performance, Brian J. Kaufman

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This research was designed to test the presumed effects of commitment, self-efficacy, and goal difficulty level on task performance. The investment model of commitment was used to experimentally manipulate commitment levels. Eighty subjects served as their own controls. For a computer typing task, performance baseline was established, then subjects performed additional trials under various commitment-to-study, commitment-to-job, and goal difficulty conditions. Seven hypotheses were tested. Analyses were conducted to determine main effects of commitment-to-study, commitment-to-job, commitment-to-goals and interaction effects among experimental conditions.

Performance score differences were significant for speed, but not accuracy across high and low commitment levels, supporting the hypothesis …

Retirement And Re-Entry Decision-Making: A Faculty Perspective, Seth Zimmer

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Universities are faced with an aging workforce and threatened with deficits in number and quality of replacements for retirees. New policies and programs affecting retirement and workforce re-entry are taking shape. This points to the need for research on the factors used by faculty members in the retirement decision-making process.

Faculty are somewhat unique in that their university roles and responsibilities often allow them to be professionally active simultaneously in other settings. The usual concept of retirement becomes somewhat blurred where faculty members are concerned.

The decision of when to retire and whether or not to re-enter the workforce must …

The Role Of The Court Of Justice In European Integration, Frances M. Jacobson

History Theses & Dissertations

This study examines the role of the Court of Justice in the major issues of European integration: dismantling technical barriers to the free flow of goods, protecting human rights within the European Community, and facilitating the free movement of capital, people and services. Success or failure of the Court is measured by whether the member states have implemented its rulings and whether the rulings have aided or hindered the development of a European internal market.

Specific actions of the Court of Justice are analyzed and placed within the context of European integration. The study begins with the European Coal and …

The Relationship Between Occupational Choice And Perceptions Of Professional Nursing Functions And Characteristics, Ellis Quinn Youngkin

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Management

This study identifies the occupational interests and predominant vocational personality types of freshmen students (undeclared majors, nursing majors, and non-nursing majors), explores perceptions about selected professional nursing functions and characteristics among the students, and examines perceptual differences between groups (majors).

A non-experimental ex post facto design is used to analyze data from 312 students in a large urban university. Descriptive and inferential statistics are applied in data analysis. The following findings support the hypotheses: (1) Nursing continues to attract the traditional student who has Holland's Social vocational personality type as measured by the Self-Directed Search, although many Social types are …