Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

S.T.A.R.T. Exchange Vol. 03, No. 01, Uno Center For Public Affairs Research

Publications

Willa Cather's Red Cloud Writes A New Chapter

Voluntary Action On The College Campus - From Theory To Practice, Debra Floerchinger

Higher Education

President and Mrs. Bush committed his administration to the promotion of volunteer service in the President's Inaugural Address in January l989. The "Points of Light Initiative" was announced in June 1989 to advance volunteerism and community service on the national level. This initiative created a foundation to promote these ideals.

Eureka! A Yurt! Integrating Mathematics, Cooperative Learning, And Community Service, Jo Anna Allen

Project Summaries

The significance of "Eureka!" in the title derives from the exhilaration of discovery that took place through a project in which a class of sixth graders built a Yurt.¹ There was a "Wow!" sense of awe and achievement akin to completing one's first rockclimb or a thousand-piece puzzle. In the words of many of the sixth graders who participated-" I can't believe we did it!" They built a scaled-down Yurt (see photo], a circular building having walls that slant upward and outward from a round base, with an overhanging, cone-like roof. The roof has a skylight in the middle, …

Differences Among Community Service Volunteers, Extracurricular Volunteers, And Nonvolunteers On The College Campus, R. Thomas Fitch

Higher Education

Students involved in volunteer community service activities display different demographic characteristics and inte1personal values than do other students.

S.T.A.R.T. Exchange Vol. 01, No. 03, Uno Center For Public Affairs Research

Publications

Stuart Targets Community Appearance

The Omaha Jewish Community Survey Report, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Publications

In an effort to better serve the needs of the Jewish community in Omaha, The Jewish Federation of Omaha initiated a study of service needs in the Spring of 1991. The University of Nebraska at Omaha's Center for Public Affairs Research (CPAR) was retained to conduct the study.

Personnel Staff Attitudes Toward The Employment Of Persons With Physical Disability, Mental Retardation, Or Mental Illness, Karol Ruth Oldenburg

Student Work

This thesis describes a measurement of personnel staff attitudes and perceptions toward the employability of disabled job applicants. More specifically, direct comparisons among three types of disability categories were made using Osgood's Semantic Scaling Method.

Sixty employment professionals of the Lincoln Human Resources Management Association rated a job applicant with physical disability, with mental retardation, and one with mental illness on the basis of 15 paired opposite adjectives. These adjectives described a variety of attributes which could be grouped into evaluative, potency, and activity dimensions of semantic space.

Respondents completed a four-page questionnaire which rated physically disabled, mentally retarded, and …

Cpar Review Vol. 02, No. 06, Uno Center For Public Affairs Research

Publications

A $100,000 commitment from the Omaha World-Herald Foundation will enable Nebraska communities to con­ tinue utilizing a successful strategic planning project. The Strategic Training and Resource Targeting (S.TA.R.T.) program directed by CPAR has helped more than 50 Nebraska communities in the past two years. The World-Herald grant will enable 40 additional communities to begin the community-based economic development program over the next two years.

Omaha Effort, The: Findings From A Survey, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Publications

This report summarizes findings from a July 1991 telephone survey. The survey was conducted for the City of Omaha Department of Public Works and focused on Omaha's current recycling program, The Omaha Effort, as well as citizen attitudes toward recycling in general.

An Empirical Models Of Community Strategies For Economic Development, Robert F. Blair

Publications

A Research Project Presentation at Annual Conference Community Development Society in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada July 22, 1991

The Effect Of Persuasion, Across Task Difficulties, On Self-Efficacy, Performance And Persistence A Thesis, Linda J. Kaiser

Student Work

Self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1977a, 1982, 1986) postulates that efficacy expectations can be modified by persuasion if it is perceived as being instilled by a credible source, it is realistic, and it is not in opposition to performance information. Subsequent research revealed equivocal results for the relationship between persuasion and self-efficacy. This study investigates the effects of persuasion, across task difficulties, on selfefficacy, performance, and persistence. A mathematical task was utilized. Six hypotheses were tested. Persuasion was found to be effective in a hardtask situation. Gender had a substantial impact on the results of this study; overall findings may have been …

Promoting Youth Development: Strengthening The Role Of Youth Service And Community Organizations, Karen J. Pittman

School K-12

Concern about youth problems is escalating. The volume of task forces, reports, initiatives, coalitions and media specials confirm that there is broad agreement that too many youth are "at risk."

Incidence Of Functionally Impaired Elderly: Comparing Enoa Samples With A Rural Sample, Chuck Powell

Publications

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once remarked: "To be seventy years young is sometimes more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old," (Cavanaugh, 1990). The comment by Justice Holmes is positive and rests on hope, the hope that we will be healthy in our old age and capable of living independently.

S.T.A.R.T. Exchange Vol. 02, No. 02, Uno Center For Public Affairs Research

Publications

First S.T.A.R.T. Conference Scheduled October 29 In Columbus

Phi Delta Kappan - Special Section On Youth Service, Joe Nathan, James Kielsmeier

Special Topics, General

This Special Section on Youth Service features: The Sleeping Giant of School Reform; School-Based Community Service: What We Know from Research and Theory; Project Service Leadership: School Service Projects In Washington State; Gadugi: A Model of Service-Learning for Native American Communities; Citizenship, Service, and School Reform in Pennsylvania; Community Service Learning And School Improvement in Springfield, Massachusetts; Community Service and Civic Education; SerVermont: The Little Initiative That Could; and National Service and Education for Citizenship.

Community Service Learning And School Improvement In Springfield, Massachusetts, Virginia Anderson, Carol Kinsley, Peter Negroni, Carolyn Price

Service Learning, General

Calls for changes in the education system continually issue forth from various segments of society. Each outpouring of public concern challenges educators to address the needs of young people and to achieve school renewal. The current literature on school reform advocates an agenda of improvement efforts aimed at creating effective, caring schools that will provide active learning opportunities for students. develop learning communities, expand learning into the community. foster collegiality among staff members, and enable teachers to become "orchestra conductors" in the classroom rather than lecturers. But educators ask, "How can all of this be achieved?"

Community Service And Civic Education, Harry C. Boyte

Civic Engagement

Community service, widely touted as the cure for young people's political apathy, in fact teaches little about the arts of participation in public life. To reengage students in public affairs requires redefining politics to include, in addition to electoral activity, ongoing citizen involvement in solving public problems. It requires a conceptual framework that distinguishes between public life and private life. And it calls for a pedagogical strategy that puts the design and ownership of problem-solving projects into the hands of young people.

Improving Public Education In Nebraska, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Publications

In 1990, the Greater Omaha Chamber of Co=erce created a study group to examine public elementary and secondary education in Nebraska. The study group was composed of representatives of the business co=unity, educators, and members of the Unicameral. Five work sessions were held to listen to experts discuss the approaches being used by other states to improve education, to discuss the applicability of such approaches to our state, and to identify a set of activities that would assure that pupils throughout Nebraska would be able to compete successfully with other young people in this country and around the world.

Turning On Youth To Politics; Beyond Community Service, Harry C. Boyte

Civic Engagement

Studies by the Times Mirror Center ("The Age of Indifference") and others purport to reveal that today's teenagers and young adults view politics with nearly universal hatred and express apathy toward public affairs generally. A little more probing uncovers a more complex set of attitudes. Allan Moyle's film Pump Up the Volume, based in part on workshops with teenagers in New York, reveals a generation not so much apathetic as disgusted with adult hypocrisy, furious at adults' apparent inaction on mounting social problems, cynical about 1960s-style protest and uncertain about what else there is to do. But it is clear …

The Dispositional Approach To Job Satisfaction: Trait Or State?, Sharlyn K. Whingham

Student Work

Job satisfaction has been one of the most extensively researched areas of Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Although situational influences on job satisfaction have traditionally been the primary focus of research, staw and Ross (1985) asserted that job satisfaction may be determined as much by personal dispositions as situational factors. Specifically, they proposed that an individual's predisposition toward optimism or pessimism is a critical determinant of job satisfaction. However, subsequent empirical investigations purporting to test the influence of the trait-like predisposition of optimism/pessimism have employed measures of positive and negative affective states. This study attempted to disentangle the influence of temporary negative and …

Looking At Barbie: Social Comparison Processes And Body Esteem Among Women, Sally Elizabeth Ware

Student Work

In this thesis, three areas are described: the phenomenon of body dissatisfaction among apparently normal-sized women from a sociocultural perspective; social comparison theory, which is proposed to be the mechanism by which the phenomenon operates; and the results of an experiment designed not only to test the nature of the phenomenon itself, but also to test certain components of social comparison theory, such as selection of comparison targets and the role of derogation.

The study reports women’s responses to inescapable social comparison on the attribute of body size and shape with two groups of social comparison targets: photographs from popular …

Moving Beyond Apathy To Environmental Action, John Fallis

Special Topics, General

It's so nice here compared to Toronto. The air is fresh and the water is so clear. You people don't have any problems.

The city is such a polluted mess. I'd like to help out but I don't know where to start, plus, it seems hopeless!

These are comments of frustrated, environmentally aware high school students who have participated in residential school programs at the Boyne River outdoor and environmental education centre. During their stay of up to a week, their lives have been enriched through a range of outdoor, hands-on, learning experiences. They may have gained a new perspective …

Cpar Review Vol. 02, No. 05, Uno Center For Public Affairs Research

Publications

Health Services Program Tested For Non-Metropolitan Communities

Psychophysiological And Personality Correlates Of Repression And Sensitization, John Patrick Kline

Student Work

This study assessed relationships among indices of modulation of stimulus intensity by the autonomic and central nervous systems, perceptual defense, and repressive coping. Subjects were twenty female and nine male paid volunteers between the ages of 19 and 38. Perceptual defense, defined as the difference in recognition thresholds for unpleasant versus pleasant words, was assessed with a tachistoscopic masking paradigm. Auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) were obtained in an augmentation reduction paradigm that evaluated cortical responses to discrete tones of varying intensity. Cardiac responses to these same tones were also obtained. Amplitude/intensity slopes were determined for P2 amplitudes obtained from the …

Touch Avoidance And Eating Disorders: A Relational Study, Christine L. North

Student Work

This relational study had therapists from an eating disorder program distribute a touch avoidance questionnaire to patients currently in treatment for an eating disorder. This study looked at touch avoidance among three groups: subjects with an eating disorder and non-sexual abuse background, subjects with an eating disorder and sexual abuse background, and a control group. The questionnaire consisted of the 20 question Same-Sex Touching Scale (SSTS) (Larsen & LeRoux, 1984) and the Touch Avoidance Measure (TAM) (Andersen & Leibowitz, 1978). T-tests revealed a significant value of -2.19 on the TAM between eating disorder and eating disorder/sexual abuse, a score of …

Communication Attitudes And Job Effectiveness Of Debt Collectors, Robert S. Embrey

Student Work

This study investigates the relationship between rhetorical sensitivity attitude sets (rhetorical sensitive (RS), noble self (NS), and rhetorical reflector (RR)), effectiveness and debt collectors. The questions to be answered are: (1) do debt collectors hold predominantly one attitudinal set more than another, and (2) does collector effectiveness correlate with any specific attitudinal set held. The measurement of attitudinal sets was accomplished using the RHETSEN instrument operationalized by Hart, Carlson, and Eadie in 1980. Collector effectiveness was determined by the collectors' manager or supervisor rating them from 1 through 7 on a semantic differential scale (1 labeled Poor and 7 labeled …

A Mandate For Liberty: Requiring Education-Based Community Service, Benjamin R. Barber

Special Topics, General

The extraordinary rise in American interest in community service has inspired widespread participation by the nation's young in service programs. It has also provoked a profound and telling debate about the relationship of service to voluntarism on the one hand, and to civic education and citizenship on the other. Two complementary approaches to service have emerged that are mutually supportive but also in a certain tension with one another. The first aims at attracting young volunteers, particularly students, out of the classroom and into service projects as part of a strategy designed to strengthen altruism, philanthropy, individualism, and self-reliance. The …

Making A Case For Collaborative Problem Solving, Christopher T. Gates

Partnerships/Community

As the number and diversity of actors expecting to be part of any community decision increase, so must the process for making those decisions become more open and accessible. Bringing diverse/layers together- finding common ground, defining share interests - is a process of self-realization whereby all community members can discover that they have the talent and ideas necessary to improve community life for themselves and their neighbors.

Cpar Review Vol. 02, No. 04, Uno Center For Public Affairs Research

Publications

Businesses and individuals registered with CPAR's NEB-INDEX on-line computerized bulletin board and database service have access to the latest 1990 population figures prior to any public notification.

S.T.A.R.T. Exchange Vol. 02, No. 01, Uno Center For Public Affairs Research

Publications

Oxford "Goes Bananas" Over Economic Drought