Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Illness And The Treatment Response: The Patient's View, Nina Patricia Van Es

Dissertations and Theses

In American society, where the biomedical profession is institutionalized and its therapies dominate health care, a decision to deviate from prevailing norms can be considered remarkable. Yet research done by Eisenberg et al. (1993) found that unconventional or alternative medicine had an "enormous presence" in U.S. health care and that one in three persons had utilized an unconventional therapy in 1990. The objective of this thesis was to explore this phenomenon.

Individuals who had used alternative and biomedical intervention to treat a disorder were recruited through practitioners of alternative therapies. Through semi-structured interviews, case histories focusing on the illness trajectory …

Planning For Academic Success: Survey Of University Professors' Assessments Of Non-Native Students' Language Skill Needs, Carol Bondurant Sloan

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study is to examine which language skills university professors believe are most essential for academic success in Portland State University classes. The study can shed light on a question for future research: Do current academic ESL classes at Portland State University teach the necessary skills to help international students maximize their second-language learning potential in university-level courses. Enrollment statistics for 1993 I 94 show 53 percent of the 815 international students declared majors in two programs: the school of Business Administration and the school of Engineering and Applied Science. This study asked 31 instructors from business …

Vocabulary Learning For Short-Term Esl Students: A Comparison Of Three Methods, Michael William Bess

Dissertations and Theses

Long-term studies with both native and non-native speakers of English have shown that vocabulary can be learned passively or "incidentally" simply through the act of reading, even through reading for pleasure. Generally, studies of incidental vocabulary learning have tested subjects' knowledge of words learned after reading novels or other longer works of prose fiction. Eighty-four students from a short-term ESL program participated as subjects in this study. Subjects were divided into three treatment groups and one control group. All subjects were given a 100-i tern word-recognition pretest, containing 45 test words and 55 dis tractors. The three treated groups were …

A Comparative Study Of Phonemic Segmentation Skills In First Grade Children With Normal, Disordered, And Slow Expressive Language Development, David J. Andrews

Dissertations and Theses

Children with slow expressive language development often catch up to their normally developing peers in expressive language, but may still exhibit difficulties with metalinguistic skills. Research shows that children who have difficulty with phonemic awareness also have difficulty with reading, which is important for success in school. Speech-language pathologists assist children who have difficulty with expressive oral language and facilitate language development in children who have difficulties with learning metalinguistic skills, such as phonemic awareness.

The purpose of the present study was to compare the phoneme segmentation skills in three groups of children: (a) children with a history of oral …

The Impact Of Collective Bargaining On The Civil Service Merit System In Oregon, David K. Blanchard

Dissertations and Theses

This study examines the impact of collective bargaining on the civil service merit system in the State of Oregon. Four topics of current interest are explored. The first is a discussion of the status of collective bargaining and the civil service merit system legislation. The second topic is an analysis of the extent to which the day-to-day administration of public sector personnel functions is determined by the relative influence of collective bargaining agreements and civil service rules. The third is the impact of the collective bargaining model on the integrity of the merit principle. The final topic addressed by this …

Soil Properties And Behavior Of Earthflows In The Mt. Hood National Forest, Oregon, Douglas Andrew Smith

Dissertations and Theses

Soils from two active earthflows, two earthflow deposits, and three non-earthflow landforms are examined to determine if a connection exists between near-surface soil properties and rates of earthflow movement. The study area is located in the Clackamas Ranger District of the Mt. Hood National Forest in the northern Oregon Cascades. Its geology consists of clay-bearing volcaniclastic formations overlain by unaltered flows of andesite and basalt, a combination that contributed to large-scale landsliding during the late Pleistocene. Deposits from these landslides now cover much of the valley floor, and it is from these deposits that earthflows tend to mobilize. The main …

Decentralization Of Urban Service Activities: An Empirical Study, Wonseon Kyung

Dissertations and Theses

Post-war metropolitan development in the United States has been mainly due to suburban growth which resulted in dispersal of population, retailing, manufacturing, wholesaling and services. What is known about service suburbanization is primarily derived from survey research on location choices done in localized cases. There has been no comprehensive work done using secondary data on revealed behavior.

This dissertation attempts that comprehensive study. The research analyzes the dynamics of locational structure of services in U.S. metropolitan areas from 1969 to 1989. The descriptive analysis of changes in the location coefficients provides evidence to demonstrate a spatial shifting of consumer oriented …

A Bootstrapped Regression Model Of Psychological Predictors Of Success In Naturopathic Medical School, Christa Claire Louise

Dissertations and Theses

In response to a need for more primary care physicians and patients' growing attraction to alternative health care, greater numbers of individuals are applying to naturopathic colleges. With increasing numbers of applicants, better methods of predicting potential effectiveness as an N.D. are needed. This study examined factors (both academic and psychosocial) that best predict success in naturopathic school.

Demographic, academic, and psychosocial survey data were collected from thirty-three students who had just completed their second year of naturopathic medical school. This information was correlated with scores on the NPLEX Basic Science exams which were taken the following summer.

Because of …

Culture And Consensus: The Use Of Mathematical Models To Examine A Culture Of Sports In The Portland Metropolitan Area, Phillip M. Crawford

Dissertations and Theses

The question of what constitutes a culture has often been answered in one phrase: shared knowledge. Recent developments in both the theory and mathematics of examining this shared cultural knowledge allow researchers to produce mathematical models of informants' knowledge and perceptions of the culture they belong to. Many studies in cognitive anthropology have utilized these theoretical and mathematical tools: the present research sought to integrate a research design (based on the theory and mathematics mentioned above) with a relatively new cultural domain: the culture of sports.

Three main question pertaining to cultural knowledge were addressed in this research:

1. Did an …

Questions-Asking Strategies Of Aphasic And Normal Subjects, Sharla Rae Harvey

Dissertations and Theses

Problem-solving abilities of individuals with aphasia have received limited attention in their assessment and remediation. At this time, there is substantially more information available on the linguistic performance of persons with aphasia than on their cognitive processing performance. Assessment of problem-solving abilities in this population has typically used tasks with low verbal loadings. However, both linguistic and cognitive competence are required for effective communication and activities of daily life.

The purpose of the present study was to determine if mild-to-moderate subjects with aphasia differed in their question-asking strategies as compared with normal subjects. A modification of Mosher and Hornsby's (1966) …

The Impact Of Enterprise Zones On Employment, Terry William Van Allen

Dissertations and Theses

The objectives of this study are to investigate the impact of Enterprise Zones (EZs) on the employment of zone residents in 14 states and 60 communities. The author's investigation constitutes the "first" national study to evaluate the employment impacts on zone residents.

The results show that the impact of EZs on decreasing the unemployment rates of zone residents is significant. Also, the interventionist factors of length of time since designation, type of incentives, and number of incentives are all significant indicators of different performances between zones. The employer-based incentives of property tax abatements and income tax credits are the types …

An Assessment Of The Riparian-Influenced Salmonid Habitat Features Of Johnson Creek, Portland, Oregon, Andrew Greiff Gude

Dissertations and Theses

Pacific salmon populations in Johnson Creek, Portland, Oregon have been adversely impacted by urbanization, and by residential and agricultural land development. Ecological impacts include loss or depletion of riparian vegetation features which directly influence stream and associated salmonid ecology. This research examines the nearstream riparian zone's contribution to instream habitat complexity for anadromous salmonids in Johnson Creek. Visual surveys were conducted on over half the stream length. Five features were assessed to determine the extent of riparian influenced stream habitat including, overhead enclosure, overhanging vegetation, undercut banks, and large and small woody debris and root wads. The stream survey showed …

The Determinants Of Women's Work: A Case Study From Three Urban Low-Income Communities In Amman, Jordan, Taghrid Khuri Tubbeh

Dissertations and Theses

This study addresses the determinants of women's economic activity in three low income communities in Amman, the capital of Jordan. These communities represent what is typically referred to as "pockets of urban poverty." Besides addressing the demographic and socio-economic variables, the study identifies and includes cultural variables in a model of female labor force participation. Modern economic systems developed definitions and measurements of productivity that render the majority of women's work as non-productive. Activities within the domestic sphere that do not earn monetary returns are not measured as productive economic activities, and hence are dropped from the calculations of gross …

Oregon Primary Care Physicians' Support For Health Care Reform, Timothy Alan Baker

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation studies Oregon primary care physicians' attitudes toward health care reform. Two models of reform are examined: one, health care rationing such as that proposed by the Oregon Health Plan (OHP); and, two, support for national health insurance (NHI).

This work examines the necessity for changing the present health care system, traced from the early origins of the medical profession to the present day health care "crisis." The high cost of health care is examined and an overview of the OHP is provided, including citations from John Kitzhaber, M.D., author of the plan.

Overall, Oregon primary care physicians overwhelmingly …

Private Profit Versus Public Service: Competing Demands In Urban Transportation History And Policy, Portland, Oregon, 1872-1970, Martha J. Bianco

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation is a case study of the history of urban transportation policy in Portland, Oregon, between 1872 and 1970. The emphasis is on mass transit policy formulated and implemented by the private and public sectors as response to crises within both the local transit industry and the urban political economy. These crises are placed in the context of the continuing conflict between the industry's right to profit and its obligation to meet the competing demands of its constituencies: ridership's demands for low fares and comprehensive service; labor's demands for competitive wages; downtown businesses' demands for peak-hour service; and the …

The Spatial Distribution Of Ground Stone Tools As A Marker Of Status Differentials In A Chinookan Plank House On The Lower Columbia River, John William Wolf

Dissertations and Theses

Social status was an integral part of the social structure of Northwest Coast societies. The presence of ranked social structures and household space based on rank is reported in the ethnographic literature. Archaeologists have long searched for independent and verifiable means to infer social structure from archaeological deposits. Burial goods have been used to identify status differences. Do other items of material culture also reflect such differences?

The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether or not the distribution of certain tools recovered from a Chinookan plank house on the lower Columbia River paralleled the household residence location that …

A Simultaneous Route-Level Transit Patronage Model: Demand, Supply, And Inter-Route Relationship, Zhongren Peng

Dissertations and Theses

It is observed that transit riders are responding to service changes while transit planning is responding to ridership changes, or that transit patronage and service supply are highly interrelated. It is also noticed that transit riders transfer from route to route, the introduction of new service may draw some riders from the existing routes, which implies transit patronage on a route is also affected by other parallel and intersecting routes. An analytic tool is needed to examine these complex relationships in the transit system. This study has developed a quantitative model by incorporating these interactions into a simultaneous system. The …

Portland's Multifamily Recycling Program: A Study Of Coproduction Policy Implementation And Citizen Involvement, William Barry Messer

Dissertations and Theses

This study is on coproduction as a governing policy instrument. Coproduction can be understood as the joint production of services by local officials and individual citizens intended to raise the quality and or amount of service provision. The concept of coproduction as developed in this study suggests that urban services are not simply created by officials and delivered to a passive public. Rather that actions of citizens are an integral part of the service production process. The study purposes are two-fold: (1) to construct a model of coproduction which provides a basis by which citizen involvement in the provision of …

Total Quality Management: The Case For The Public Sector: A Comparative Study Of The Implementation Of Total Quality Management In Three Health Care Organizations, Zayed Mohammed Abu

Dissertations and Theses

Total quality management [TQM] is an approach to improving the competitiveness, effectiveness and flexibility of the whole organization through the improvement of the organizational processes and those who perform them. There has been a rising interest among public sector professionals in examining the applicability and usefulness of TQM methods to public organizations. This research provides descriptive information about the experience of three health care organizations that vary in terms of ownership, whether being publicly or privately owned, with implementing TQM. Participants at these organizations were interviewed, and/or surveyed and observed. The study provides a narrative description of each organization's experience …

Aids-Preventative Behaviors And The Psychological Costs Of Behavior Change, Howard Balshem

Dissertations and Theses

This study examined the effects of behavior change on psychological health among gay and bisexual men of Portland, Oregon who were at risk for contracting AIDS. Cross-sectional self-reports of personal experiences were obtained in Summer, 1991. Sexual behaviors were used as predictors of self-efficacy, depression, anxiety, and subjective well-being. Adopting safer sexual behaviors was psychologically more costly than continuing to engage in high risk behaviors, or long-term adherence to safer behaviors. Behaviors amenable to short-term change differed from those conducive to long-term maintenance. Behavior change was also found to have a beneficial effect on self-efficacy.

These findings suggest that behavior …

The Role Of The Chinese News Media In The 1989 Pro-Democracy Movement, Mei Liao

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines the role of the Chinese news media in the 1989 pro-democracy movement. The three functions of this thesis are: 1) to provide evidence of changes in the pro-democracy movement; 2) to identify corresponding changes in the press coverage of the movement; 3) to examine what relationship exists between changes in the movement and changes in the press coverage of the movement.

Ethnic Identity Changes Among Hong Kong Chinese Americans, Pui-Lam Lo

Dissertations and Theses

During the last ten years, the number of Hong Kong Chinese migrating to the U.S. has increased. These new immigrants, with knowledge and life experiences shaped by the urban metropolis of Hong Kong, have begun to influence different aspects of Chinese communities in U.S. cities. A study of this group of Hong Kong Chinese provides a better understanding of how they have adapted to their new environment and how they have come to recognize themselves as Hong Kong Chinese Americans. In reviewing the available literature, very few studies have dealt with the identity changes of this group of people. Hence, …

Development Of High-Technology Industries In The Portland/Vancouver Metropolitan Area: An Analysis Of Regional And Intraregional Factors Affecting High-Tech Firm Locations, Ulf Eichner

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis aims to investigate local conditions of high-tech industry development in the Portland/Vancouver CMSA. To do so, the research proceeds in four major stages. First, it is analyzed how historical factors contributed to the rise of high-tech industries in the CMSA. The second part consists of mapping the distribution pattern of hightech establishments. The U.S. Bureau of Census' County Business Patterns statistics are used to calculate the number of high-tech establishments and employees by branch (SIC code) and county; two high-tech directories help to identify the exact firm locations. Thirdly, an explanatory set of locational factors is established, based …

Evaluation Of Information Resource Management: Measuring Change In A Federal Bureaucracy, Randolph D. Perrin

Dissertations and Theses

This is a case study of a federal bureaucracy and its Information Resource Management (IRM) organization. The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a federal power marketing agency and part of the Department of Energy, significantly impacts the western United States. BPA is responsible for developing electric power resources, transmission of electric resources, power conservation programs, and fish and wildlife programs.

The focus of the study is the perception of the quality of information supplied to management, assuming that better information makes better decisions. The study uses a pre-experimental research design to evaluate the satisfaction executive and middle management with information they …

The Relationship Between Cognitive Skills Measured By Piagetian Tasks At Age 2 And Linguistic Skills Measured By An Expressive Language Test At Age 4 In Normal And Late Talkers, Rebecca Jayne Laplante

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between cognitive skills as measured by Piagetian tasks at approximately 2 years of age and expressive and receptive language scores from tests administered to the same children 2 years later. The questions this study sought to answer were: 1. Is there a significant difference in the performance of normal children and late-talking children on Piagetian cognitive assessment at age 2? 2. Is there a significant relationship between the cognitive scores at age 2 and language scores at age 4 in each of the two diagnostic groups? Sixty-four subjects participated in …

The United States-Japan Security Treaty Of 1951: An Essay On The Origins Of Postwar Japanese-American Relation, Christopher S. Johnson

Dissertations and Theses

The early September day in 1951 that brought the Pacific War to an official end, with the signing of a treaty of peace, concluded as representatives of Japan and the United States signed the Bilateral Security Treaty. The security treaty symbolized new realities of international relations, just as the peace treaty had buried the old. By cementing into place a strategic alliance between the former Pacific antagonists, the treaty represented the great and lasting achievement of postwar American diplomacy in Asia. Nevertheless, the treaty was both the outcome and the perpetuation of a stereotyped and lopsided relationship, now fixed firmly …

Determining The Property Value Impact Of Landfills, Okwuchukwu Gerald Uba

Dissertations and Theses

The decline in property value can be due to owner's act or exogenous act from the operation of landfills. Landfill neighbors, especially home owners, perceive landfill operation to pose environmental safety problem such as ground water contamination and methane gas leakage that could affect home value.

Owners of landfills, especially those landfills that accept only dry waste (limited purpose landfill), claim that since their facilities meet the requirements of environmental regulations and the type of waste they accept could not possibly produce methane gas and leachate there is no property value impact of their facilities.

Several studies have shown that …

Comparative Analysis Of Resettlement Policies In Third World Countries, Abrahim Jawad Al-Khalisi

Dissertations and Theses

Settlement policy in the Third World has been stimulated by the availability of public land. This availability of public land has prompted many Third World countries to adopt policies or schemes called resettlement, transmigration, or land development. These have been presented as potential means for addressing numerous agendas held by Third World countries. Settlement policies have been used to increase agricultural production and make idle land productive. Spatial imbalances of population distribution have been addressed via settlement policies. For national security, settlement policies have been used to exploit frontier lands. Solutions to serious political problems including lack of agricultural self-sufficiency, …

Cities And Automobile Dependence: An Empirical Examination Of Density And Automobile Dependence Relationship And Their Underlying Factors, Musaad Abdullah Al-Mosaind

Dissertations and Theses

Over the last several decades, low-density development and increasing levels of automobile dependence have become two of the major problems facing many urban areas. While they have significantly improved urbanites' mobility, freedom, and social contacts, and have expanded the ranges of economic activities, they have also brought numerous problems and externalities. Mitigating their negative externalities through appropriate policies necessitates the examination of their relationship and the effect of other urban elements. This research examines the relationship between density and automobile dependence and its underlying factors within cities. It examines the effects of quantifiable factors at three levels of analysis: regional, …

The Voices I Never Hear: Communication Apprehension And Associated Nonverbal Behaviors In The Primary School Child, Linda Dunn

Dissertations and Theses

The confidence to communicate orally with others is the first requisite for verbal interaction. Anxiety which occurs in anticipation of speaking with others or while engaged in speaking hinders interaction, and is referred to as communication apprehension. This study examines levels of communication apprehension among a sample primary school population and the possible relationship between such levels and frequencies of nonverbal behaviors called self-adaptors that may be associated with the anxiety. Greater awareness of communication apprehension in children is justified in light of research that suggests it is negatively related to academic achievement in elementary school students. A four-month field~study …