Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Perceived Personal And Societal Control Of Events And Millennial Irrationalism, Angela Nicole Dennis

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship among millennial irrationalism and the degree to which people believe they have control over the events in their lives as reflected by performance on a locus of control scale. This belief is referred to in this study as internal or external locus of control. It was hypothesized that individuals who feel that they have considerable control over the things that happen to them would express less irrationalism than those who tend to ascribe the course of their lives more to external factors. It was also predicted that there would …

Gender, Self-Efficacy, Anxiety, Experience, And The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition, Short Form (Wais-Iii), Laura Jean Blalock

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships between gender, self-efficacy, anxiety, experience and the WAIS-III, short form. This study investigated the hypotheses that gender differences occur on select subtests of the WAISIII, short form, that math self-efficacy, math attitudes, and math experience affect Arithmetic scores, and that motor speed affects performance on the Digit Symbol subtest. The sample consisted of 93 undergraduate students from the University of Northern Iowa (36 males, 57 females). Students completed questionnaires and were administered the WAIS-III short form individually. Males scored higher on the Arithmetic, Information, and Digit Span subtests and …

Family Structure And Children's Academic Achievement : The Role Of Income And Parental Control, Jean M. Hoth

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this quantitative study is to examine the relationship between family structure and children's academic achievement, and to assess the roles of income and parental control in this relationship. The present study involves secondary analysis of data from the National Survey of Families and Households (Sweet & Bumpass, 1996) The National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) is a national random sample survey conducted in two waves that covers a wide variety of issues on American family life. This study examines data gathered from the second wave of this data set. The total sample for the present research …

The Sun Always Comes Out After It Rains: Exploring The Experience Of Aids Caregivers (Immune Deficiency), Susan Cadell

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This research was designed to explore the growth of people who have cared for or about someone who has died of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)-related illnesses or complications related to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) disease. It consists of a cross-sectional study of 176 bereaved caregivers of people with HIV disease, some of whom themselves are HIV-positive. Measures were selected to assess demographics, creativity, spirituality/religiosity, social support, depression, traumatic symptomatology and posttraumatic growth. A research model is tested which examines the relationship of psychosocial resources and stressors to the post-traumatic growth of the bereaved participants. In addition, seven caregivers participated …

Professional Interventions With Parents At The Time Of The Sudden Death Of A Child, Linda Susan Charlotte Maxwell

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The sudden death of a child is likely the most traumatizing event a parent can experience. Traumatic death, and particularly the death of a child, increases the risk of a complicated grieving process in mourners. Little has been written with respect to the interventions of professionals with parents at the time of a sudden death of a child. The present study examines the experiences of parents with a variety of professionals from the time of death notification through the funeral. Twenty parents who were involved in Bereaved Families of Ontario participated in this study. The purpose was to examine the …

Women's Employment Initiatives As A Means Addressing Poverty: A Comparative Study Of Canadian And Chilean Examples, Linda L. Snyder

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The well-being of economically marginalized women and their families is increasingly threatened in the current context of precarious employment and diminishing state intervention. In advanced welfare states, global competition and neo-liberal economic thinking have prompted the dismantling of social programs. In other countries, political and economic crises have led to the uncontested application of neo-liberal economic policies. These transformations create severe economic hardship as well as social exclusion and political disempowerment. Women's employment initiatives have shown some ability to address economic needs at the individual family level However, given a theoretical framework that emphasizes the importance of addressing underlying socio-political …

A Survey Of Feeling As Motivation In Volunteerism And Ethics, Sung Taek Shim

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This essay is based on a qualitative study which asks people to identify those factors which motivated them to undertake volunteer work in church and community. Among those factors identified, feeling plays a large role. The paper then reviews historical and theoretical issues in the discussion of the importance of feeling in making ethical decisions.

Toward A Model Of Team Situation Awareness, Alexis Anne Fink

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Situation Awareness (SA) is a construct that is considered important to safety in dynamic, risky, time-constrained and complex environments, such as military aviation, nuclear reactors and emergency management. Research consideration of SA is complicated by the fact that there is no clearly superior methodology for SA measurement. Typically, SA is considered at the individual level; however, the nature of the SA context often requires more than one individual for safe and effective operations. Team SA is a qualitatively different phenomenon than individual SA. Few models of team SA have been proposed. The primary purpose of this paper was to develop …

Increasing Readiness To Change Among Smokers In A Primary Care Setting, Sheila F. Collicott

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study compared the effectiveness of two brief interventions, direct advice and motivational interviewing, for increasing motivation to quit among male smokers in the pre-contemplation and contemplation stages of change who were primary care patients at an Eastern urban VA medical center. Contrary to expectations, participants receiving motivational interviews did not increase more in readiness to change, motivation, and actions to quit, than those receiving direct advice or a control conversation, nor did they smoke fewer cigarettes per day. As expected, contemplators reported more cutting down and quit attempts than pre-contemplators. Factors that may have limited the effectiveness of interventions …

The Challenges Of Globally Accessible Process, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter embraces the strategic use of the Internet for achieving new forms of transparency and participation in the regulatory cooperation process. It explores ‘the challenges of globally accessible process’ through the use of new information technologies. It holds that the incorporation of these technologies in agency processes at the US federal level has created possibilities for the most transparent, participatory, and broadly deliberative regulatory system in the world to become still more so. The Internet promises not merely to expand access to information about the substance and process of regulation, but also to ‘move the government closer to the …

Daily Life In The Shadow Of Empire: A Food Systems Approach To The Archaeology Of The Ottoman Period, Oystein S. Labianca

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Dating Behavior Of Latter-Day Saint Male Returned Missionaries: A Process Of Managing Desires, Nancy C. Mclaughlin

Theses and Dissertations

Each year thousands of Latter-day Saint males return to their homes after serving a two year religious mission. According to Latter-day Saint doctrine and cultural beliefs, these young men are expected to resume a normal life including dating and involvement in romantic relationships. Research and Latter-day Saint doctrine related to the dating behavior of returned missionaries (RMs) is reviewed. Most previous research has emphasized the quantitative analysis of single aspects of RMs dating behavior such as dating frequency and social status. In an attempt to add to this field of research, this qualitative analysis explored the attitudes and experiences of …

Gvsu Undergraduate And Graduate Catalog, 2000-2001, Grand Valley State University

Course Catalogs, 1963 - Current

Grand Valley State University 2000-2001 undergraduate and/or graduate course catalog published annually to provide students with information and guidance for enrollment.

Community Social Disorganization Theory Applied To Adolescent Academic Achievement, Spencer Ross Baker

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

Over the years, the public education system has been transformed by outside political and societal forces to provide an equal opportunity for all students. Investigations of the public education system were not consistent and yielded divergent results on how to improve adolescent academic achievement. These divergent results were caused by different operationalizations of variables, data analytical procedures that possibly provided biased parameter estimates, and a failure to use a comprehensive theory. Although these results were inconsistent, the latest transformation of the public education system currently involves holding schools, administrators, parents, and students accountable for learning.

The measurement of success in …

Cultural Values And Happiness, Timothy B. Smith

Faculty Publications

Csikszentmihalyi (1999) has reminded us that social scientists cannot shrink from challenging the validity of our most cherished values, including the fundamental nature of happiness. He cites research affirming that material wealth does not correlate with happiness and then presents data correlating happiness with the experience of flow. However, in making this leap Csikszentmihalyi confuses correlation with causation. Because losing oneself in a project, relationship, or dream is followed by a very positive condition does not mean that the experience itself caused happiness. It is equally likely that losing one self is the causative factor. In looking at his data …

Becoming Mormon Men: Male Rites Of Passage And The Rise Of Mormonism In Nineteenth-Century America, Bruce R. Lott

Theses and Dissertations

The evidence presented in this thesis supports a view of the first Mormon men as coming from the agrarian majority of early nineteenth-century American farmers and artisans who embraced a set of manly ideals that differed significantly, in many ways, from those embraced by their middle-class contemporaries. These men's life writings attest to boyhood experiences of working alongside their fathers as soon as they were physically able, and subsequently of acting as substitute farmers and breadwinners as well as being put out to work outside the direct supervision of their fathers. Such experiences enabled them to frequently follow in the …

Evaluation Of The Kent County Work Progressions Program, Kevin Hollenbeck

Reports

No abstract provided.

A Note On Commutes And The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis, Kelly Derango

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

A number of empirical studies have tested the spatial mismatch hypothesis by examining the commuting times of blacks and whites. This note points out that the link between spatial mismatch and commuting times may be weak when employment probabilities decline as the distance from job site to residence increases. A simple spatial model of urban employment is developed in which a fixed number of agents live in the central city. Two examples are presented in which increased spatial mismatch may either increase or decrease the average commuting time of central city minorities, depending on the rate at which employment probabilities …

Alternative Measures Of State Ui Systems, Christopher J. O'Leary, Robert Tannenwald, Wei-Jang Huang, Pei Zhu

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Comparisons among state unemployment insurance (UI) systems can be misleading. Frequently quoted indicators of benefit generosity, tax cost, and adherence to the experience-rating principle are influenced by the relative economic conditions of states. Such comparisons thereby obscure underlying structural differences in state UI systems. A business considering alternative states in which to locate a production facility should be cautious when interpreting UI information in an economic developer's marketing pitch. This paper offers alternative indicators based on how representative firms, with a well specified unemployment experience, would fare in different states. The authors use a micro-simulation approach to model the experiences …

Unemployment Compensation And Older Workers, Christopher J. O'Leary, Stephen A. Wandner

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Unemployment compensation in the United States is provided through a federal-state system of unemployment insurance (UI). UI provides temporary partial wage replacement to active job seekers who are involuntarily out of work. For older workers, UI is an important source of income security and a potential influence on work incentives. For many, the transition from full-time work in a career job to retirement is voluntary and orderly. For others, job displacement greatly disrupts plans. The transition often involves many intermediate steps. The chain of transitions may include full- or part-time work on another job which most often is not in …

Memorial: Margaret Althea Goldblatt (1948-2000), Margaret A. Leary

Articles

Margaret Goldblatt, who died on June 15, 2000, in Cape Town, South Africa, after a year-long battle with cancer, was a rare combination of librarian and entrepreneur. She had both a sense of humor and a sense of professionalism that endeared her to those who knew her. Many of her colleagues knew her only through telephone and e-mail communications, for she worked the last several years from the office of Ward and Associates, located in the home she shared with her husband Peter Ward and her two children, Clea Goldblatt, age 21, and Zachary Ward, age 11.

Proclamation-Based Principles Of Parenting And Supportive Scholarship, Craig H. Hart, Lloyd D. Newell, Lisa L. Sine

Faculty Publications

How parents view the nature of a child and their own role as parents has great influence over the life of that child. Many perspectives about the nature of children have arisen in the course of Western Civilization that have shaped childrearing practices for centuries, including the increasingly accepted scholarly view that parents matter relatively little in children’s lives. (2) This chapter emphasizes inspired, eternal principles that are supported by empirical and conceptual scholarship, which suggests that optimal parenting does indeed matter in children’s lives.

Fronting And Palatalization In Two Dialects Of Shoshoni, Dirk Elzinga

Faculty Publications

In Western Shoshoni, a Uto- Aztecan language spoken in northern Nevada, coronal obstruents are found in distributional patterns which depend on the presence or absence of a preceding front vowel ([i] or [e]). In the pattern I refer to as FRONTING, alveolar stops alternate with dental stops - dental stops occur following front vowels (la), while alveolar stops occur elsewhere (lb); this pattern is common to all dialects:

Ethnic Representation In A Sample Of The Literature Of Applied Psychology, Leslie Case, Timothy B. Smith

Faculty Publications

A number of authors have raised concerns over the external validity of psychological research. This study examined the extent to which empirical articles include human participants from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Articles published over a 5-year period in 14 selected journals representing 3 applied subdisciplines of psychology were examined. Of the 2,536 articles coded, only 61% indicated the ethnicity of the participants. For those articles, the ethnic compositions approximated U.S. Census estimates, with the exception of an over representation of African Americans and an under representation of Hispanic Americans. The results imply that although the field is apparently adequately recruiting English …

Just For Money? : An Exploratory Study Into The Motivations Of Nude Dancers, Elaine Vance

Dissertations and Theses

Women working as nude dancers have been depicted both in academia and popular literature either as victims of patriarchal exploitation and economic oppression, or as empowered women choosing the most profitable form of work out of the limited options provided for them. This study explores these opposing motivational factors for the entrance and continuance of nude dancing, integrating the theoretical framework of Sex Positive feminism with Strauss and Corbin's (1990) grounded theory approach. Sex Positive feminism asserts that sex work is neither oppressive nor exploitative but rather can be a consensual and legitimate avenue resulting in an increase in women's …

The Market And Ethics: The Case Of The 1994 Decision By The Clinton Administration To Delink China's Human Rights Record From Most-Favored-Nation Status, Susan C. Morris

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Amid the globalization of markets and the interdependence of states, human rights violations throughout the world still persist. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the economic interdependence of nations and the moral responsibilities of nations by examining the case of the 1994 decision by the Clinton administration to delink China's human rights practices from most-favored-nation status.

The annual 1997 Freedom House world survey of human rights rated China at its lowest point and quoted that “the regime continues to have one of the worst human rights records in the world.”1 Yet despite China's ongoing human …

Portuguese-Americans And Mental Health Treatment Client-Therapist Ethnic Match, Ethnic Identity, And Satisfaction With Treatment, Katherine B. Gamble

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Multicultural issues in psychotherapy have increasingly been recognized as important in the provision of mental health services to our diverse population. Issues such as beliefs about mental health, attitudes toward authority, and even world view affect how clients access and make use of psychotherapy. Cultural views are essential to how one sees the world, and consequently there is much debate about whether clients would benefit from having therapists from the same cultural background. Ethnic identity, or the degree to which a person holds to the beliefs of their culture of origin, consequently plays an important role in psychotherapy. The Portuguese …

Cytotoxic T Cell Response To Influenza Vaccination In Older Adults, Caroline R. Letter

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses & Dissertations

Influenza infections result in activation of cellular and humoral immune responses, leading to stimulation of cytotoxic T cells (CTL) and helper T cells with subsequent viral clearance.

By using an assay of granzyme B activity, the in vivo cellular-mediated immune response of old adults was found to be significantly decreased in comparison to young adults. The effect of aging on the CTL response was further investigated via enzyme-linked immunospot technique. A significant increase in number of virus-specific T cells occurred in older adults after vaccination, although the magnitude of the CTL response decreased in comparison to young adults. These data …

Developing A Parametric Cost Model For Operating Costs Of Army Ground Combat Weapon Systems, James O. Winbush Jr.

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop a parametric cost model for predicting operating costs of Army ground combat weapon systems. The model is intended to be used during the first two phases of the Army's acquisition process. The research necessary to develop the model was guided by two questions: what weapon system characteristics (such as weight, horsepower, fuel consumption, primary mission, NBC protection, fire control and night fighting capability) impact directly on operating ground combat systems; and what is the form of the parametric model for operating costs for ground combat systems? The study extends the bounds of …

Bilingual Sentence Processing: Relative Clause Attachment In English And Spanish, Eva M. Fernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Monolingual studies have shown that the relative clause attachment ambiguity, illustrated by the sample English sentence below, is ultimately interpreted in different ways by speakers of English and Spanish: (1) Someone shot the maid of the actress that was on the balcony. English speakers tend to attach the relative clause to the lower noun, actress, while in the comparable sentence in Spanish, Spanish speakers generally prefer the attachment to be to the higher noun, maid. This thesis compares the relative clause attachment preferences of monolingual and bilingual speakers of English and Spanish. Data were collected using a speeded self-paced reading …