Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Survey Of Those In The U.S. Deaf Community About Reading And Writing Asl, Jennifer Keogh

Theses and Dissertations

On average, students who are deaf do not develop English literacy skills as well as their hearing peers. The linguistic interdependence principle suggests that literacy in American Sign Language (ASL) may improve literacy in English for students who are deaf. However, the Deaf community in the United States has not widely adopted a written form of ASL. This research surveys individuals in the U.S. Deaf community to better understand the opinions surrounding literacy in ASL.

The survey was presented online, containing both ASL in embedded videos and written English. The survey asked for the participants' demographic information, language and educational …

The Imperative Of Conserving California's Foothill Oak Woodlands, Lauren Phillips

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Pedagogical Development Of Zen Buddhism And Taoism For Taos Ed. Ventures, Kelsey Tyler

Social Sciences

Taos Ed. Ventures is an outdoor guiding company that will be offering backpacking trips in Taos, New Mexico to high school and college students, with ages ranging from 16 – 29, starting the summer of 2015. Along with backpacking skills, the philosophies of Zen Buddhism and Taoism will be taught while on the trail. To teach these philosophies, a pedagogy was created, combining aspects of Sentipensante and Contemplative pedagogies that seeks to teach the daily applications of Zen Buddhism and Taoism through experiential and innovative learning methods, such as journaling, meditation, and mindfulness practices. The benefits of these alternative learning …

Health Information And Social Security Entitlements, Perry Singleton

Center for Policy Research

This study examines whether new health information, obtained through medical screening, affects entitlements to Social Security benefits. Random assignment of information is derived from a unique feature of the Continuous National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. To examine the effect of information on entitlements, the survey data are matched to administrative data from the Social Security Administration. The results suggest that new health information leads to delayed entitlements, particularly among workers near the early retirement age.

Personality And Science Training As Predictors Of Science Teaching Efficacy Beliefs, Holly Saint

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Various factors have been researched over the past decade related to teaching efficacy under NCLB. Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) guided this correlational study with 13 Alabama and 10 Tennessee public school districts to examine 114 K-4 teachers' personality measured by the Big Five Inventory (BFI) personality factors; science pre-service training and school-district professional development training measured by an unpublished Science Training Survey; and science teaching efficacy beliefs measured by the Science Teacher Efficacy Belief Instrument (STEBI). The BFI's personality factors and science training were examined in combination using a hierarchical linear regression in an eight-step model while controlling for …

Our Dark Places: Questions About Prison Privatization’S Benefit To Louisiana, Christian Hess

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Manufacturing Sector In The Greater Northeastern/Northern Region Of Pennsylvania, Ziona Austrian, Candi Clouse, Merissa Piazza, Nikki Glazer, Eunkyu Lee, Hyejin Jung, Eric Esoda

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

This report summarizes the findings of an in-depth study of the manufacturing sector in the Greater Northeastern/Northern region of Pennsylvania. The objective of the first section is to draw attention to the role manufacturing plays in the regional economy. It compares manufacturing to other sectors of the economy in terms of employment, gross regional product, wages, productivity, and number of establishments (See Table E-1). It also briefly describes trends in the value of shipments of manufacturing goods as a proxy for exports, manufacturers’ investments in capital expenditures as a measure of capital intensity and adoption of technology, and patenting activity …

Less Acting, More Doing: How Surface Acting Relates To Perceived Meeting Effectiveness And Other Employee Outcomes, Linda R. Shanock, Joseph A. Allen, Alexandra M. Dunn, Benjamin E. Baran, Cliff W. Scott, Steven G. Rogelberg

Psychology Faculty Publications

This study adds to the growing body of research on work meetings and extends the emotional labour literature beyond a service context by examining the relationship between surface acting during meetings and perceived meeting effectiveness. Additionally, the relationships of surface acting during meetings and perceived meeting effectiveness with time-lagged reports of intention to quit and emotional exhaustion 3 months later were investigated. Structural equation modelling of data from 178 working adults revealed negative relationships between surface acting and perceptions of meeting effectiveness. Perceived meeting effectiveness partially mediated the relationship between surface acting and both intention to quit and emotional exhaustion …

Latinos In Massachusetts Selected Areas: Taunton, Phillip Granberry, Mayara Fontes

Gastón Institute Publications

This report provides a descriptive snapshot of selected economic, social, educational, and demographic indicators pertaining to Latinos in Taunton. It reflects a commitment by UMass Boston’s Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy to provide periodic updates on the growing Latino population in Massachusetts. The report on Taunton is part of a larger series that covers cities and towns with a population between 35,000 and 100,000 residents in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with a significant Latino population. Each report analyzes data from the American Community Survey (ACS) conducted annually by the U.S. Census Bureau. We obtained the …

An Examination Of Twitter's Role In The Formation Of Collegiate Sport Fans' Allegiance Using The Revised Psychological Continuum Model (Pcm), Sukjoon Yoon

All Theses

Allegiance has long been considered one of the most notable research topics in sport studies (Funk & Pastore, 2000; Wann & Branscombe 1990). Allegiant fans are those who have formed strong connections to their favorite team, and these attitudes strengthen their psychological involvement. Twitter has grown dramatically since its inception in 2006, totaling more than 500 million users as of early 2013 (Gupta, Goel, Lin, Sharma, Wang, & Zadeh, 2013). Twitter is one of the most popular communication technologies used by both fans and sport organizations (Clavio, 2011), and allows individuals, organizations, and other social groups to connect with one …

Chin Music: A Statistical Analysis Of Retaliation Pitches In Major League Baseball, Peter Jurewicz

All Theses

This paper is focused on hit batsmen in Major League Baseball from the 2008 season through August 20th of the 2013 season. More specifically, this paper examines the characteristics of retaliation pitches and attempts to determine the intent of the pitcher. The paper also takes into account moral hazard and cost-benefit analysis of hitting an opposing batsman. There has been a vast amount of literature in economics with regard to hit batsmen in Major League Baseball. However, very few of these papers have been able to evaluate economic theories in Major League Baseball using Pitchf/x data. Pitchf/x technology became fully …

Differences Between For-Profit, Non-Profit, And Public Hospitals In Medical And Non-Medical Categories: Costs And Outsourcing Decisions, Justin Knutter

All Theses

The purpose of this study is to measure and compare several potential differences between for-profit, non-profit, and public hospitals in medical and non-medical cost categories. To do this, costs associated with two medical and two non-medical categories for California short-term general care hospitals were broken down into several subsets in order to better understand exactly how and why each category behaves as it does. The results show significant differences for total costs between for-profits and the other hospital types across the board and a difference for outsourcing decisions between for-profits and the other hospital types for the medical categories but …

Minimum Investment Requirement, Financial Integration And Economic (In)Stability: A Refinement To Matsuyama (2004), Haiping Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This note proposes a simple, more precise, necessary condition for symmetry breaking in Matsuyama (Financial Market Globalization, Symmetry-Breaking, and Endogenous Inequality of Nations, Econometrica, 2004 ), i.e., the positive interest rate response to income changes, which essentially arises from the assumptions of financial frictions and minimum investment size requirement of individual projects. This condition also holds under the more general settings. Thus, this note o ers an empirically testable hypothesis, i.e., Matsuyama's symmetry breaking is more likely, if the interest rate response to income changes is positive and sufficiently large.

Testing For Indirect Reciprocity In Charitable Activities, Christine Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a test of indirect reciprocity using US data on charitable activities in terms of both time and money. We find that expecting help from friends or relatives in the future positively affects the probability and the amount of charitable activities performed.

An Efficient Two Sample Capture-Recapture Model With High Recaptures, Danjuma Jibasen, Yusuf J. Adams

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This paper proposed an efficient two sample capture-recapture model (Ma) with high recaptures and compared it with the existing models like the model of no factor effect (Mo), behavioral response model (Mb) and the Petersen model (Ms), using simulated data. We found that the Petersen model provides a better estimate of the population size when the observations follow a hypergeometric distribution and the population is overestimated when recapture is high. It was also found that the proposed model provides a better estimator of the population size than the existing ones when the recapture is high. This model is particularly useful …

Causal Relationship Between Stock Market Index And Exchange Rate: Evidence From Nigeria, Abdulrasheed Zubair

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This paper uses Johansen’s cointegration to test for the possibility of cointegration and Granger-causality to estimate the causal relationship between stock market index and monetary indicators (exchange rate and M2) before and during the global financial crisis for Nigeria, using monthly data for the period 2001–2011. Results suggest absence of long-run relationship before and during the crisis. The Granger-causality tests show a uni-directional causality running from M2 to ASI before the crisis while during the period of the crisis there is absence of causality between the variables. This suggests that ASI show responsiveness to M2. Thus, absence of the direct …

Investigating Chaos In The Nigerian Asset And Resource Management (Arm) Discovery Fund, Ibiyinka A. Fuwape, Samuel T. Ogunjo

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This paper investigates chaos in a Nigerian mutual fund, Asset and Resource Management Company Limited (ARM) for a period of eleven years. The existence of chaotic signals in the data was identified by the reconstruction of the phase space of the daily closing price of the fund and the delay time was quantified using mutual information function and the embedding dimension by the false nearest neighbours, where the values were identified to be 15 and 20 respectively. The presence of chaotic signals in the ARM data was further confirmed by the correlation dimension method which yielded a dimension of 2.2 …

Modeling The Nigerian Inflation Rates Using Periodogram And Fourier Series Analysis, Chukwuemeka O. Omekara,, Emmanuel J. Ekpenyong, Micheal P. Ekerete

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This work considers the application of Periodogram and Fourier Series Analysis to model all-items monthly inflation rates in Nigeria from 2003 to 2011. The main objectives are to identify inflation cycles, fit a suitable model to the data and make forecasts of future values. To achieve these objectives, monthly all-items inflation rates for the period were obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) website. Periodogram and Fourier series methods of analysis are used to analyze the data. Based on the analysis, it was found that inflation cycle within the period was fifty one (51) months, which coincides with the …

Nigerian Stock Index: A Search For Optimal Garch Model Using High Frequency Data, Olaoluwa Simon Yaya

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This paper attempts to fit the best Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) model for All Share Index (ASI) of Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) returns. A search is made on various GARCH variants specified on the assumptions of stationarity and asymmetry. Fractionally integrated types are also considered to capture the possibility of return series having property of long range dependency. The parameter estimations are carried out on the assumptions of normality and non-normality of GARCH innovations, with models and forecasts evaluated using information criteria and loss functions respectively. Under normality assumption, Hyperbolic GARCH (HYGARCH(1,d,1)) model is selected and Integrated GARCH (IGARCH(1,1)) …

Time Series Modeling Of Nigeria External Reserves, Iheanyichukwu S. Iwueze, Eleazar C. Nwogu, Valentine U. Nlebedim

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This paper discusses the levels and trend of external reserves in Nigeria. The relevance of this lies in the fact that it could help to monitor the reserves and throw early warning signal about any economic crisis. Monthly data on Nigeria external reserves for the period January 1999 to December, 2008 derived from the 2008 CBN Statistical Bulletin was analyzed using ARIMA model. Results of the analyses show that (i) the data requires logarithmic transformation to stabilize the variance and make the distribution normal (ii) the appropriate model that best describes the pattern in the transformed data is the Autoregressive- …

A Markov Decision Process Approach To Optimal Control Of A Multi-Level Hierarchical Manpower System, Akaninyene U. Udom

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

A recurrent problem in manpower control is how to attain the desired structural configuration in an optimal way, since it is possible to reach a desired structural configuration using different control inputs. The major aim of this paper is to develop a Markov Decision Process for optimal control of a Multi-level Hierarchical Manpower System (MHMS) by promotion and interdepartmental transfers. This is examined under control by intervention and contraction cost Markov Decision Process.

Identifying Latent Structures In Panel Data, Liangjun Su, Zhentao Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper provides a novel mechanism for identifying and estimating latent group structures in panel data using penalized regression techniques. We focus on linear models where the slope parameters are heterogeneous across groups but homogenous within a group and the group membership is unknown. Two approaches are considered -- penalized least squares (PLS) for models without endogenous regressors, and penalized GMM (PGMM) for models with endogeneity. In both cases we develop a new variant of Lasso called classifier-Lasso (C-Lasso) that serves to shrink individual coefficients to the unknown group-specific coefficients. C-Lasso achieves simultaneous classification and consistent estimation in a single …

Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimation For Spatial Panel Data Regressions, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This article considers quasi-maximum likelihood estimations (QMLE) for two spatial panel data regression models: mixed effects model with spatial errors and transformed mixed effects model (where response and covariates are transformed) with spatial errors. One aim of transformation is to normalize the data, thus the transformed models are more robust with respect to the normality assumption compared with the standard ones. QMLE method provides additional protection against violation of normality assumption. Asymptotic properties of the QMLEs are investigated. Numerical illustrations are provided.

Detecting Well-Being Via Computerized Content Analysis Of Brief Diary Entries, William Tov, Kok Leong Ng, Han Lin, Lin Qiu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Two studies evaluated the correspondence between self-reported well-being and codings of emotion and life content by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC; Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2011). Open-ended diary responses were collected from 206 participants daily for 3 weeks (Study 1) and from 139 participants twice a week for 8 weeks (Study 2). LIWC negative emotion consistently correlated with self-reported negative emotion. LIWC positive emotion correlated with self-reported positive emotion in Study 1 but not in Study 2. No correlations were observed with global life satisfaction. Using a co-occurrence coding method to combine LIWC emotion codings with life-content codings, …

Recruiting The All-Female Rani Of Jhansi Regiment: Subhas Chandra Bose And Dr Lakshmi Swaminadhan, Tobias Frederik Rettig

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The recruitment of the all-female Rani of Jhansi Regiment of the Indian National Army in Japanese-controlled Singapore and Malaya, with a particular focus on the period between the first female guard of honour on 12 July 1943 through to the opening of the regiment's main camp in Singapore on 22 October 1943, has to date been insufficiently studied. Starting with the conception of the Regiment in an Axis submarine by the Indian nationalist leader Subhas CHANdra Bose (1897–1945), this paper examines the ideas and figures that inspired the regiment and the role of Bose and Dr Lakshmi Swaminadhan (1914–2012) in …

From Emotions To Shared Values, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In an invited commentary, SMU director of Behavioural Sciences Institute Professor David Chan noted that although the negative emotions that dominated 2013 have led to some positive outcomes, emotions cannot be the foundation for society’s progress. Professor Chan suggested that, moving forward, Singapore should focus on three shared values (integrity, fairness, social harmony) and three guiding principles (rule of law, accountability, people-centricity).

Topicsketch: Real-Time Bursty Topic Detection From Twitter, Wei Xie, Feida Zhu, Jing Jiang, Ee Peng Lim, Ke Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Twitter has become one of the largest platforms for users around the world to share anything happening around them with friends and beyond. A bursty topic in Twitter is one that triggers a surge of relevant tweets within a short time, which often reflects important events of mass interest. How to leverage Twitter for early detection of bursty topics has therefore become an important research problem with immense practical value. Despite the wealth of research work on topic modeling and analysis in Twitter, it remains a huge challenge to detect bursty topics in real-time. As existing methods can hardly scale …

Between Evangelism And Multiculturalism: The Dynamics Of Christianity In Indonesia, Chang Yau Hoon

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Christianity has experienced rapid growth in Indonesia, particularly the Evangelical and Pentecostal/Charismatic movements, which find fertile ground among the urban middle class. This phenomenon has given rise to fears of Christianisation among the Muslim majority, who perceive the Christian growth as a moral threat. Tensions between Christians and Muslims have been part and parcel of religious developments in Indonesia. The author addresses the ways in which Protestant churches in Indonesia negotiate between evangelism (to fulfil the ‘Great Commission’) on the one hand, and multiculturalism (peaceful coexistence with difference) on the other. The article will examine how Christians in Indonesia navigate …

The Fiduciary Doctrine As A New Pathway: An Alternative Approach To Analysing Native Customary Rights In Sarawak, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper explores the use of the fiduciary doctrine whereby the state is conceived as a fiduciary vis-à-vis her native peoples and attendant equitable remedies are made available for the native customary rights over land in Sarawak. Thus far, most challenges to extinguishment of native customary rights in Sarawak have proceeded on constitutional grounds, with little success. This article draws on the jurisprudence of fiduciary law in other parts of the Commonwealth and argues that this is a viable alternative cause of action against the state.

Public Law Theory And Judicial Review In Singapore: Jeyaretnam Kenneth Andrew V Ag [2013] Sgca 56, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Court of Appeal affirmed the High Court’s ruling that the applicant had no locus standito challenge the compatibility of a loan made by the Government to the InternationalMonetary Fund with Art 144(1) of the Constitution. On the interpretation of Art 144(1), therewas no prima facie case of reasonable suspicion that such incompatibility existed. Moreover,the applicant did not have sufficient interest in the matter.