Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Peer Context Influences On School Motivation: A Naturalistic Observation Of Peer And Teacher Contingencies Following On-And Off-Task Behavior In A Fifth Grade Classroom, Nicole Ann Sage

Dissertations and Theses

With regard to school motivation and performance, two questions have been central for both educational and developmental psychologists; Why do some students do well in school whereas others do not and why is it that over time, those students who do well, continue to do well, while those who don't, often get worse? Findings with regard to the first question are conclusive; many factors are associated with doing well in school. With regard to the second question however, the findings are less conclusive.

Parents, teachers and peers have been regarded as contexts in which socialization occurs. However, much of the …

The Importance Of Time For Processing In Second Language Comprehension And Acquisition, Jennifer Lee Watson

Dissertations and Theses

Research findings on the positive impact of interaction on comprehension have led to questions regarding both the connection between comprehension and acquisition and the qualities of interaction which facilitate understanding (Ellis et al. 1994). Ellis et al. found that a high degree of comprehension on an activity which contained unknown words correlated with a high rate of vocabulary acquisition. The present study replicates the activity and testing procedures used by Ellis et al. The main focus of the Ellis et al. study was the connection between second language comprehension and acquisition. This study differs from Ellis et al. in that …

State Funding For Special Education In Oregon : Calculating Cost Differentials Of Special Education For Handicapped Students In Oregon School Districts, Kyung-Sup Kim

Dissertations and Theses

A general principle of school finance is that the cost of the educational program is influenced by varying characteristics of students and school districts. This raises the question of whether state allocation policies should reflect the additional costs associated with particular educational programs, such as special education for handicapped students, vocational, compensatory, bilingual education, and gifted and talented education programs as well as cost differences associated with size, salaries, and related issues. Thus, it is essential for state government to identify cost differentials for special education programs in terms of various school districts to determine the importance of such differences …

Video Self-Monitoring As An Alternative To Traditional Methods Of Pronunciation Instruction, P. C. Noble

Dissertations and Theses

Japanese students of English have difficulty pronouncing /f/, Ir/, /1/, /v/ and "th", sounds that are either not present in their language, or as in the case of /r/, articulated in Japanese more like an English /di. Their difficulty with these sounds seems to affect their comprehensibility in English to native-speakers of English.

The purpose of this partial replication of a 1994 study by MacDonald, Yule and Powers was to test three different methods of pronunciation instruction ( and a control) to determine which promoted the greatest improvement in the pronunciation of the five target sounds among Japanese speakers. The …

Public Transportation For The Elderly: A Neighborhood-Area Fixed-Route Alternative, Richard James Burke

Dissertations and Theses

As the elderly population of the United States grows in coming decades, providing personal mobility will be increasingly challenging. The dispersed suburban residential pattern of most metropolitan areas ensures that the personal automobile will continue to be the dominant mode of transportation. Those who voluntarily or involuntarily stop driving will encounter serious constraints in meeting their transportation needs.

Conventional public transit in most cities is tailored to the needs of urban commuters, and is, at best, barely adequate for elderly riders. Supplemental demand-response or subscription "special-needs" services are often inconvenient, sometimes unreliable, and inefficient. Eligibility criteria restrict many non-disabled elderly …

The Juice Is Loose?: A Qualitative Study Of Employees’ Perceptions Of Informal And Formal Communication Channels, Warren Jerome Brown

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine how employees perceive formal and informal communication channels within their organizational experiences. This study sought to answer two questions: One, what are employees' perceptions of formal and informal communication channels? Two, what similar or dissimilar perceptions of formal and informal communication channels emerge from interview and observational data? I selected eight respondents from the greater Olympia, Washington and Seattle, Washington areas. Each respondent was purposely selected based upon their rich experiences across different sizes of and public/private structures of organizations. Additionally, I conducted seven observations within a medium-sized (50 -75 employee) public …

The Effects Of Parental Involvement, Structure, And Autonomy Support On Children’S Help-Seeking And Problem-Solving Coping In School, Ronald Wayne Yoder

Dissertations and Theses

The effect of parenting on children's coping in school was investigated. Sixhundred and twelve children in grades three to five provided self-reports on four ways of coping, including help-seeking, concealment, strategizing and confusion, and the parenting dimensions of involvement, structure, and autonomy support. Psychometric analyses conducted on each dimension of parenting, resulted in reducing the number of parenting variables to two: involvement and structure/autonomy support. Correlational analyses found the predicted relations between children's experiences of parenting and their ways of coping in school. Multiple regressions indicated that only unique (positive) predictor of the two positive ways of coping (help-seeking and …

Gangstas, Niggas, Bitches And Hos : A Narrative Analysis Of Gangsta’ Rap Lyrics, Darnell A. Watson

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines gangsta' rap as a form of narrative. It addresses the following questions: 1) Is gangsta' rap a form of narrative; most significant characterizes the 2) if yes, which narrative elements are to interpreting the stories; 3) what elements which are most significant to interpreting the stories and 4) what kinds of stories are being told? Data for the analysis included transcribed lyrics from a representative sample of gangsta' rap recordings. Journal articles, media articles and books germane to understanding the social and cultural context of gangsta rap were also used. It was found that gangsta' rap lyrics …

Urban Sprawl, Media Monopoly, And Citizen Participation : A Longitudinal Case Study Of Daily Newspapers In Portland, Oregon, Andrew David Butz

Dissertations and Theses

The process and consequences of global economic expansion are the subject of increasing scholarly and popular attention. Emerging patterns of globalization are of particular interest from a sociological standpoint. This study establishes a theoretical and methodological approach for examining, within a framework of competing values, locally observable effects of the widely recognized global trend -- of increasingly concentrated news media ownership. Recent patterns of development in Portland, Oregon provide the specific context for this study. As in most American cities within the past generation, Portland experienced a shift from having independent, competing daily newspapers to having one conglomerate-owned monopolistic daily. …

Collective Intervention In Internal Conflicts : An Examination Of Why States Participate, Andrew L. Blum

Dissertations and Theses

There is a longstanding debate in the international relations discipline over the relative influence of self-interest and norms on the behavior of states. This study will seek to contribute to this debate by investigating what motivates states to engage in a specific type of behavior, which I will call collective intervention. The multinational operations, which have attempted to resolve internal conflict in places like the Congo, Lebanon, El Salvador, Cambodia, Somalia and Bosnia, are the result of this behavior. Dozens of states, of diverse economic standing, military capability, geographic region, and political ideology have participated in these operations. This study …

Drug Testing And Oregon Workers : Is Perceived Fairness Of Corporate Drug Testing Moderated By Drug Use?, Leslie James Normandy

Dissertations and Theses

This study proposed that two predictors of perceived fairness of organizational drug testing would be moderated by drug use. These two predictors, outcome of a positive drug test and whether respondents were ever previously tested for drug use, had been found to be predictors of perceived fairness of drug testing. It was expected that the theories of organizational justice and cognitive dissonance would explain these relationships. Additionally, it was proposed that drug users would perceive drug testing as less fair than would non-drug users.

Participants were 191 adults randomly selected throughout the state of Oregon. The survey items measuring the …

Virtue, Liberty, And The Good : A Critical Analysis Of Civic Republicanism, Nathan Douglas Austin

Dissertations and Theses

Dissatisfaction with liberalism is nothing new. As the longstanding dominant force in Western political thought, it has been subject to unending hostile critiques from a variety of sources. Of the criticisms of liberalism advanced in recent years, some of the most persistent and scathing have been levied by scholars identified with civic republicanism. Civic republicanism has adopted the pose of a counter philosophy to liberalism. Civic republicans, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, and Cass Sunstein, argue that liberalism is an impoverished political conception that is unable to provide or sustain the moral energies necessary for a vital democratic life. …

Declining Total Fertility Rates In Bangladesh And Indonesia From 1970 To 1996 : Causes, Implications, And Analysis, William Bruce Aronson

Dissertations and Theses

Many Asian countries have recently undergone dramatic fertility rate reductions, in what has been labeled the "Asian Fertility Revolution." The purpose of this study was to discover what factors led to declining total fertility rates from 1970 to 1996 in Bangladesh and Indonesia, two Asian countries with relatively low total development levels. Because of these low levels, it was hypothesized that factors outside of economic development have contributed to these countries' successes with fertility reduction. This is especially true for Bangladesh, which remains an undeveloped country; Indonesia is partially industrialized, and has made economic gains during this 26-year period. Theoretical …

"Blame It On Intake” : A Critical Ethnography Of The Negotiation Of Access To Shelter Services In A Shelter For Homeless And Battered Women, Kathleen Marie Drew

Dissertations and Theses

Even though the number of homeless women has increased among a population viewed as typically male (Merves 1992), there is still little research focused on women. This study investigated the communicative practices in and through which gendered identity was constructed, negotiated and performed at a point of rupture when the norms for judging a "good woman:"--that is woman as wife, as mother, and as homemaker appear to have been violated. The negotiation of access into an urban shelter for homeless and/or battered women provided a rich site for the study. The research was grounded in the assumptions of symbolic interaction …

Public Interest Group Politics And American Political Culture, Patrick Henry Brennan

Dissertations and Theses

Recent theories of interest group behavior have attempted to gain an understanding of how these groups mobilize for political action. However, these theories have led to account for a crucial aspect of public interest groups, a particularly important segment of the interest group universe. The purpose of this essay is to shed light on the ways that interest group theories must adapt if they are to better reflect this unique aspect of public interest group behavior. Specifically, it is necessary to acknowledge the role that a group"s ideas regarding shared American values play within the behavior of groups that seek …

The Summit Vegetation Of Saddle Mountain, Oregon Coast Range, Charles Thomas Carlson

Dissertations and Theses

Saddle Mountain (1000 m) is the highest peak in the Northern Oregon Coast Range. Meadows are found to occur at and near the summit of the mountain which contain abundant wildflowers. Although the majority of these meadow species have been collected and identified in the past no formal study has been done to classify them into communities. The purpose of this study is to examine the character and origin of the plant communities located at or near the summit of Saddle Mountain. Data were collected on 4 study sites during the Summer of 1996 and analysis of the data lead …

Expected And Existing Competencies Of External Industry Trainers In The Human Resource Development Field, Julia M. Zachmann

Dissertations and Theses

In the field of Human Resource Development, high standards of professionalism are needed to increase the commitment to training, especially from the side of management. This study focused on external training deliverers, and investigated different perspectives concerning their competencies. The expectations (E) of core competencies of excellent external trainers had been identified and were compared to the actual performance (P) of external trainers in a specific company. Ratings were gathered from four different perspectives, the trainees and clients (supervisors of trainees) of recent training events (consumers) and HRD managers and external trainers (marketers).

The rationale for the study was a …

An Ethnographic Study Of Chinese Adolescent Identity In Taipei, Taiwan : Franchise Hangouts, Jui-Fang Ruby Chen

Dissertations and Theses

One of the discriminating changes that Taiwan is experiencing is a shift in young people's view of "self," manifested in and through their daily activities within its cultural context (Yang, 1981). The question arises, how do Taiwan's adolescents shape their view of "self' within this contemporary context at the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures? This thesis examined on how Chinese adolescent identity was constituted symbolically in and through their speech practices within a public social context, a typical Westernized dining place--McDonald's, a U.S. fast food restaurant, and how such a locale both served and made sense by these urban …

Sexual Intercourse : A Feminist Reading Of Strip Joint Discourse, Regina Marie Howard Yaroch

Dissertations and Theses

The discursively-constructed stereotype of stripper plays an important role in the ideology that sustains our system of sexual relations. This construction also interacts with and constrains the lived reality of actual women who earn their living in the stripping industry. This research attempts to examine this interaction by exploring the discourse that is generated by stripping industry participants. A long interview transcript is analyzed as a text to develop a feminist reading that focuses on the socio-cultural forces that make a particular story possible as well as necessary to tell. This story emerges, through the first-person account of a dancer-informant, …

A Comparison Of Two Second Language Acquisition Models For Culturally And Linguistically Different Students, Karen Dorothy Kuhn

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this thesis research was to determine if there were significant educational advantages in terms of sociocultural development for culturally and linguistically different students enrolled in a two-way bilingual education program as compared to those directly mainstreamed. Eighteen third-grade students were selected from two schools in the same school district. Half of the subjects spent their third grade year in a two-way bilingual educational program while the other half were mainstreamed into a submersion education program. Each subject was culturally (Hispanic) and linguistically (Spanish was the dominant language) different from mainstream students. A qualitative summary and statistical analyses …

Managing Oregon’S Aquatic Resources : A Dynamic Segmentation Application, Keith Andrew Hupperts

Dissertations and Theses

Many of Oregon's salmon, the cultural icon of the region, are imperil. Salmon runs ranging from the Snake River to the Oregon coast, from chinook to coho to steelhead to cut-throat are being protected or candidates for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act of 1973. As Oregon's salmon decline natural resource agencies, such as Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), are seeing substantial funding cutbacks. In order to compensate for lost personnel and rising work-loads, ODFW is increasingly turning to new technologies, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This thesis describes the creation of a dynamic segmentation GIS …

Patient Behaviors And Beliefs : Are Standardized Patients Different?, Colleen Shannon Lewy

Dissertations and Theses

Standardized patients (SP's) are lay people who are trained to evaluate and train clinical skills for medical personnel. It was hypothesized that since SP's have had practice and experience interacting with medical personnel that they would exhibit higher levels of patient interaction with their own health care providers. Surveys were sent to SP's affiliated with two medical schools in the Northwest as well as a control group from a local university. Surveys consisted of the Thompson Decisional Involvement scale, the Ende Autonomy Preference Index, the Krantz Health Opinion Survey: Information Seeking subscale, a Satisfaction Criteria scale, and an Expectations survey. …