Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Monopoly Study Of Authority, Micheale Hall Williams

Dissertations and Theses

The Monopoly Study of Authority was an institutional grant project designed to test the variables of authority and protection in a laboratory experiment conducted in the Small Groups Laboratory. Subjects (Ss) were recruited and paid a minimum wage to play Monopoly, while the Experimenter (E) manipulated the relevant variables, observed and video-taped the games.

The hypothesis states that the greater the investment, the more likely will the individual make efforts to protect it. The dimensions of investment were ego involvement (desire to win, competitiveness), and resource commitment (Ss were offered rewards of double-time pay for winning the Monopoly game). Efforts …

The Transition To Nazism, The History Of The German Town Of Pfungstadt, 1928 To 1935, David E. Arns

Dissertations and Theses

Pfungstadt is a small German town which to date has not earned a footnote in the histories of either the Weimar Republic or the Third Reich. Based upon the efforts of men in towns like Pfungstadt (and towns which were not like Pfungstadt) the members of the Nazi party built a political structure which reached to the pinnacle upon which Adolf Hitler stood. Researching the growth of the Nazi party, the intense struggles that occurred with democratic forces, the seizure of power and the installation of a workable system of government is the problem. This thesis in no way purports …

A Descriptive Study Of Educational Background, Contraceptive Knowledge, And Choice Of Agency Among Selected Girls 18 Years Old And Under Seeking An Abortion At The University Of Oregon Medical School, Carol A. Carter, Lititia J. Kirk, Jane F. Ogier

Dissertations and Theses

This study was conducted at the University of Oregon Medical School located in Portland, Oregon. This school has performed many abortions since Oregon liberalized its abortion law in 1969. In Oregon in 1968 before the abortion law was changed there were 238 abortions performed, 35% of these were for women under the age of 19. During 1971 there were 6,997 abortions of these 2,625 were for girls of age 19 and younger.

An Approach To The Decentralization Of Health Care Services In Multnomah County, Oregon, Stephen L. R. Cook, Roger George Philippi

Dissertations and Theses

In the past several years, the subject of health care delivery has assumed increasing importance as a public issue. Congressional hearings, public and private commissions, and task forces have investigated the functioning of the health care system in depth, reporting that access to the system is impeded by financial barriers and by inefficiency of the delivery system. Medicare and Medicaid have attempted to surmount the financial barriers for, some segments of the population, and more inclusive health insurance proposals are being considered in Congress. The Healthright program, under the Economic Opportunity Act, has stimulated efforts to improve the delivery system …

An Alienation Measurement And Observed Behavior: A Study Of Forty-Two Male Seniors In A Technical High School, Jack Leo Terzenbach

Dissertations and Theses

The study examined the relationships between subjects' degree of alienation and descriptions of their behaviors. The subjects were 42 male, senior students at Benson Polytechnic High School who attended one of two required social science classes. Benson High School is an all male, technical high school which admits students from all parts of the City of Portland, Oregon. Alienation was defined as a syndrome of feelings consisting of apathy, distrust, pessimism, cynicism, and emotional distance. The degree of subjects' alienation, as defined, was measured by the Multiple Alienation Measure devised by Dr. Laurence J. Gould. Subjects' were thereby divided into …

Psycho-Social Aspects Of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia In Children, Sally Myers Hingley, Judith Ann Mckay

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of the study was to assess psycho-social differences between two groups. A review of the literature suggested psychological and social factors may affect the onset and progression of malignant disease. Comparisons were made between a group of 23 experimental families with a leukemic child, and a group of control families with a normal child matched for child's sex, age, and number of siblings. Data. was gathered on three quantifiable measures; Coddington's Social Readjustment Rating Questionnaire; a specially constructed Child's Questionnaire, and The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

The leukemic children and their matched normal controls had approximately equal numbers, …

A Case Study Of The Northwest District Association And Portland City Planning Staff, Jill Sally Haldeman, Kathryn Cynara Heisler

Dissertations and Theses

This is a study of how a city planning staff worked together with a neighborhood group to develop a comprehensive plan for a neighborhood. It explores their relationship and the major conflicts that arise when they work together to develop a district plan.

Identities In Gay Drinking Places, Sharon Gertrude White

Dissertations and Theses

It is through the announcement and placement of various identities that one is able to enter into various types of social relations. Identity is a label used to describe a person in a particular situation as being a kind of social object. A person announces his identity and others place him as having this identity on the basis of his appearance. Structural relations have been defined as relations where one may enter by using a title, while interpersonal relations are entered by using a name or nickname. Structural identities place people in categories, while separating them from others in different …

An Exploration Into The Applicability Of A Psychological Technique For Anthropological Research, Gwendolyn Marie Harris Pierce

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis purports to explore and describe the types of information that would be obtainable to the anthropological researcher if he used the minimally structured small group (MDMS-SG) technique with members of a selected ethnic group. The approach was tried on Japanese Portland State University students and also on Saudi Arab Portland State University students for six sessions each. They were told that a graduate anthropology student wanted to get to know them and learn what they thought she should know about their countries.

The sessions were taped and notes written after each session. This corpus of material was analyzed …

A Regional Approach: City-County Consolidation As A Method Of Local Governmental Reorganization, Anthony Gene White

Dissertations and Theses

City-county consolidated governments are examined to isolate factors important to the success of the consolidation process, and are measured against objective and subjective criteria for the operation of such governments. Data are obtained through survey techniques and statistical analysis of demographic information. Results indicate that such success-oriented consolidation factors inherent in city-county governments do exist and can be interrelated in a mathematical model. Consolidated governments appear to improve their ability to handle urban problems, and officials of consolidated governments are more confident of their ability to handle these problems than are officials of other metropolitan governments reorganized in different manners.

Ames Trapezoid Illusion: A New Model, Daniel Robert Kelly

Dissertations and Theses

Current explanations for the Ames Trapezoid Illusion are based upon the the absence of cues: the illusion is said to occur at chance. A review of recent literature showed that: (a) the illusion varies in frequency as a function of target shape (b) that the dominant cue to reduce the frequency of the illusion is the variant in retinal height. Based upon the dominance of this cue a new model was presented. Following this model it was hypothesized that observers viewing partial rotation when the target produces the greatest difference in the retinal height of the ends would determine the …

Inter-Bureau Power Relations: A Sociological Analysis Of An Ideal Type Organizational Model, Gerald Wayne Potterf

Dissertations and Theses

The research problem of this thesis is an examination of inter-bureau power relations. A modification of Max Weber's classical ideal type bureaucracy is the conceptual model to which sociological analysis is made. An empirical examination of the variance between the conceptual model and data collected in the field is analyzed in order to illustrate inter-bureau power relations. The analysis of the conceptual model is based upon three assertions. They are: (1) inter-bureau power relations are based upon coercion and not cooperation; (2) normative standards that are established by the administrators of the bureaucracy are differentially enforced; and (3) goals that …

The Effectiveness Of Environmental Control In Modifying Problem Behaviors In Mother-Child Interaction, Thomas Whalen Hamilton

Dissertations and Theses

An experiment was designed to test the effectiveness of using standard laboratory environments in producing a broad class of problem behaviors which defined Mother-Child (M-C) interaction difficulties. The effects of four environments, free-time (X), child's game and rules (B), mother's game and rules (C), and clean-up (Z), on the frequency of eight criteria behaviors were tested on 12 M-C pairs over three days of baseline data collection. It was predicted that the frequency of problem behaviors would decrease as a function of environment (X) and increase as a function of environments (B), (C), and (Z). A two factor …

Communicative Abilities: An Analysis Of The Interactions Of Reticent And Non-Reticent Task Groups, Myron W. Lustig

Dissertations and Theses

This study is focused upon an investigation of observable interactive behaviors which might be characteristic of reticence. A reticent individual is defined as one for whom apprehension about participation in oral communication consistently outweighs the projection of gain from the situation.

Previous research in the area of reticence has been focused on an analysis of the reticent student's attitudes toward communication relying primarily upon subject self-reports via journals and the in-depth interview. This in turn has provided possible areas in which observable reticent behaviors might evidence themselves in face-to-face small group communications with other reticents and non-reticents.

An answer to …

Behavioral Changes Due To Overpopulation In Mice, James Robert Hammock

Dissertations and Theses

Previous research has found that if a population were allowed to exceed a comfortable density level, then many catastrophic events occurred such as increased mortality among the young, cannibalism, homosexuality, and lack of maternal functions. The most influential researcher in this area is Calhoun (1962), after whose experimental design a pilot study was fashioned to replicate his results. The results of this pilot study inspired a more detailed research project of which this thesis is an account.

Forty-eight albino mice of the Swiss Webster strain were divided into three groups of sixteen each. Each group consisted of ten females and …

The Effects Of Sociological Theories Of Poverty On Job Training Programs, Michael Richard Deshane

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is an exploratory study of the effects of two job training programs for the poor in Portland, Oregon. It seeks to illustrate that training programs are designed around certain theoretical conceptions or models of poverty and that these theoretical conceptions ultimately have a strong effect on the enrollees in programs designed on the given theoretical model. Two general theoretical models have been extracted from the literature. The first is the "Culture of Poverty" model and the second may be called the "Closed Opportunity Structure" model.

The culture of poverty model posits that the poor are unable to escape …

The Effects Of Marihuana Extract Distillate On Eating Behavior Of Rats, Terrie Wetle

Dissertations and Theses

Since hunger drive is often used as a motivating factor in animal learning experimentation, it was decided to determine the effects of marihuana extract distillate on the eating behavior of rats. Carlini and Kramer (1965) found marihuana extract injections to have a faciliatory effect upon maze performance. They suggested that facilitation could have resulted from and increase in hunger drive. However, if the dosage level is high, this effect may last for a short time and be followed by a disinterest in food. Scheckel et al. (1968) report that some monkeys, at very high dosage levels of tetrahydrocannabinol starved to …

The Effect Of Labeling Disfluencies As 'Stuttering' And Contingent And Yoked "Wrong" On The Disfluencies Of Normal Speakers, Dennis Ray Staines

Dissertations and Theses

A labeling variable suggested by Wendell Johnson's "diagnosogenic" theory of the onset of stuttering was included in this study of the disfluencies of normal speaking college students in order to explore further the hypothetical relationship between normal disfluency and the onset of stuttering. A total of 60 Ss were randomly assigned to the following groups, each containing 10 Ss: I. Labeling Chastisement plus Contingent "wrong;" II. Labeling Chastisement plus Yoked (non-contingent) "wrong;" III. Labeling Chastisement - No "wrong;" IV. No Labeling Chastisement Contingent "wrong;" V. No Labeling Chastisement - Yoked "wrong;" VI. No Labeling Chastisement - No "wrong" …

Age, Emotional Maturity And The Decision To Marry, Patricia Ann Duclos, David F. Thomas, Joanne Zusman

Dissertations and Theses

The decision to marry and choice of mate are two issues contemplated by most individuals during their lifetime. It is our belief that the manner in which an individual makes these decisions is a reflection of that individual’s level of emotional maturity.

In our society, the right to enter into a marriage agreement is largely determined by chronological age. Our research problem began with the hypothesis that there is no direct relationship between chronological age and emotional maturity at the time of marriage.

For our study, marriages were divided into two general categories: 1) teenage marriages in which at least …

An Interactional Approach To Weight Reduction, Carole T. Gygi

Dissertations and Theses

A treatment program was designed to enable subjects to lose weight through the use of self-confrontation as described in Saslow (1969), and the use of the General Relationship Improvement of the Human Development Institute (HDI), Berlin and Wyckoff (1964).

Self-confrontation is a programmed rehearsal of a specific problem by one person alone, for a five-minute period. The rehearsal, or self-confrontation is to be as vivid as possible, intellectually, emotionally, visually and physically.

The General Relationship Improvement Program is a 10-week text, worked in pairs, which is aimed at better intrapsychic and interpersonal communication and understanding.

Four matched groups were used …

Foster Family Care For The Aged, Donald V. Sekora

Dissertations and Theses

The following was a research practicum instituted as an actual project for the State of Montana Welfare Department between June, 1970, and May, 1971. The project had a two-fold purpose in being conceived: one purpose was to fulfill a graduate school academic requirement; and the second purpose was to fulfill a responsibility to the people of Montana who would eventually gain some benefits from this project. The series of written documents that follow are the description of that project's conception and actualization in six Montana counties. The first part is the project idea and theory; the next two parts consist …

The Father's Role In Treatment: A Survey Of Selected Social Service Programs, Joanne Robertson

Dissertations and Theses

This is a descriptive, partially exploratory study which examined the date obtained from interviews with socials workers in selected social welfare programs in regard to the father in treatment. Explored were descriptive information concerning the agency's characteristics, the type and extend of treatment offered, the involvement or resistance of the father in therapy, and the provision made for a surrogate male model in the event of the father's absence.

The literature revealed that currently there is a growing body of knowledge and theory related to the father's role in the psychosocial development of the child and the consequences of his …

Predictors Of Placement From A Juvenile Detention Facility, Diane C. Brock

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this project was to determine whether certain personal, socioeconomic, and court-related factors are significantly related to the differential placement of delinquent and dependent children from the detention facility at the Donald E. Long Home. A stratified random sample was composed of 173 placements of children who were held in detention after a preliminary hearing.

The review of literature revealed that little systematic. Information is known regarding the placement process as it is related to differential placement of children from a detention facility.

A code sheet was developed for recording the information in the children's records maintained by …

An Attempt To Find Predictor Variables Which Will Discriminate Between Those Patients Who Seek Aftercare Treatment And Those Who Do Not Seek Aftercare Treatment Upon Discharge From A Psychiatric Ward, Nena V. Johnstone, William D. Lynch, Philip M. Baldwin, John C. Kemp

Dissertations and Theses

This is an exploratory follow-up study of the clientele of the Psychiatric Crisis Unit, a short-term, crisis-oriented inpatient psychiatric ward. The main objective of the research was to test the following null hypothesis: there are no significant differences between those individuals who attempt to gain aftercare treatment as opposed to those individuals who do not following discharge from the Crisis Unit.

A sample of fifty-one voluntary patients who consented to participate in the study was used in testing this hypothesis. Each subject completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (M.M.P.I.) and a sociological questionnaire while in the Crisis Unit, and a …

Anxiety Level Of Graduate Students In Social Work, Sophia Kouidou-Giles, George Albert Mckee

Dissertations and Theses

This study was designed to determine (1) the trend of anxiety level of social work students, term by term, over the academic year; (2) the cyclical trend of anxiety level of social work students within each term and (3) the effects of age and sex on level of anxiety among social work students.

Anxiety was measured with the IPAT - 8 Parallel Form Anxiety Battery. This test was administered to twenty randomly selected first year students in the School of Social Work during the 1969-1970 academic year at Portland State University. Data was collected from six test administrations which …

A Conceptual Model For A Human Resource Center For Voluntarism, Helen L. Warbington

Dissertations and Theses

The increase in voluntary activities in both public and private sectors of the U.S.A. has begun to make it clear that information is needed concerning models for new or different ways of working with people in volunteer agencies.

This study attempted to develop a model for a Human Resource Center for Voluntarism which began with three objectives. They were to:

1. stimulate and/or provide avenues for closer working relationships among existing agencies and organizations involving volunteers,

2. broaden the base of citizen participation in community services,

3. reinforce the relationship between adult education and community service by allowing for individual …

Continuance Vs. Discontinuance In Family Counseling, Katherine Anderson, Alice Dudley, Mayetta Rocks

Dissertations and Theses

The study was designed to examine the social workers' and clients' perceptions of change in the treatment process; specifically to examine the question of why clients discontinue service prior to planful termination. Also, the authors attempted to assess the client's perception of gain and the worker's assessment of gain.

Day Care Centers' Manpower Elements And Training Needs, Philip Kwakuvi Kudiabor

Dissertations and Theses

In the Portland Metropolitan area, a wide range of programs and facilities, including informal arrangements, are used for the care of children outside their homes during some part of the day. These programs and facilities include those whose primary purpose is child development, education, or recreation (Headstart, Parent and Child Centers, Nursery Schools, Kindergartens, Extended School Services, and Play School). They also include day care provided by non-profit organizations such as churches and hospitals by private proprietory day care operators and independent family day care homes, and by employers and labor unions in addition to cooperatives. These programs involve a …

Life Styles Of Methadone Treatment Patients: Agreement Of Self Report And Informant Report, Richard Cox, Gary West

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this descriptive study was to reveal the typical life style of a representative sample of fifty male opiate addicts participating in the Oregon Methadone Treatment Program. An important goal of the research was to assess the reliability of information gathered from patients compared to data obtained from an equal number of informants. A highly structured questionnaire was designed to elicit specific responses in order to calculate the degree of concordance between patients and informants to identical items. The findings depicted the modal life style of the subjects as more socially conventional, more responsible, and less antisocial. Although …

Federal Reserve Lending To Commercial Banks: Effects On Financial Market Stability And Monetary Control, David Allen Simantel

Dissertations and Theses

The Federal Reserve has proposed a change in its method of administering the discount window. This paper looks at the effects of this proposal on monetary control and on the money markets, assuming that banks base their behavior on profit maximization over the long run.

First, the reserve supply process is postulated. The conditions under which borrowing from the Federal Reserve will improve or reduce monetary control are stated. Second, the primary reserve adjustment process is formulated to show how primary reserve adjustment can affect rates in the money market. Finally arguments are set forth to show how borrowed reserves …