Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Hot Topic: State Shared Taxes And Appropriations (2005-2006), Dick Phebus

MTAS Publications: Hot Topics

Based on economic projections for FY 2006, municipalities are expected to receive approximately $101.36 per capita for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2005.

Tennessee Municipal Benchmarking Project Fy2004, Al Major

Tennessee Municipal Benchmarking Project

FY2004 annual report to compare the relative cost, efficiency and effectiveness of a set of municipal services by using a collaborative approach with the participating cities, and to set standards and identify "best practices" in municipal government for use and comparison by all Tennessee cities.

Vendor Communication, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Do vendor reps provide librarians with the information they need in the way they need it? Do vendors feel they are communicating effectively with their librarian clients? A recent survey of North American and European academic librarians commissioned by Jim McGinty, vice chair of Cambridge Information Group, and carried out by consultants David Oglivie and Simon Inger may help improve this tricky, but important, communication process. McGinty presented the first results as the annual Miles Conrad Memorial Lecturer at the 2005 annual meeting of the National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services (NFAIS). Almost 200 academic librarians responded to his …

Shopping For Information: Industry Behemoths, Niche Sellers, And Boutique Shops Compete For Library Dollars, Carol Tenopir, Gayle Baker, William Robinson

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Both librarians and end users have more shopping options than ever when it comes to finding information. From small boutiques with specialized products to the one-stop shopping of megastores, the database marketplace of 2005 resembles retail shopping. But some worry that the information marketplace will be subject to the same uncertain market conditions of the retail world, where it's difficult for small stores to compete when megachains come to town.

Technical Bulletins: Amending Comprehensive Growth Plans, Dennis Huffer, David Connor

MTAS Publications: Technical Bulletins

Includes the steps to follow in amending a comprehensive growth plan.

Value Similarity And Satisfaction In Interpersonal Relationships, Lauriann Lowe Hebb

Doctoral Dissertations

Rokeach (1960) proposed that similarity of values, that is characterization of people based on the level of congruency or incongruency of their beliefs to our own is more important in determining relationships than other variables, such as socioeconomic status or education. However, not much research has attempted to explore this proposal and the studies have been reported have yielded inconsistent results. Therefore, the present study (a) determined whether relationship dyads are more similar on values than random pairs, (b) examined differences between actual and perceived similarity, and (c) investigated the correlation between value similarity and satisfaction.

The sample consisted of …

The Impact Of Gender Frame Sponsorship On The Frame Process In Sport, Christie Morgan Kleinmann

Doctoral Dissertations

Media represent a dominant constructor of reality in today's mediated culture, and frame research has examined this construction, particularly in sport, and concluded that media influence the continuance of hegemonic ideals that devalue women (Carragee & Roefs, 2004; Funkhauser, 1973; Lind & Salo, 2002). Framing's alignment with agenda setting centers on the transfer of frames from agenda to agenda through frame sponsorship and incorporates an examination of power by considering who influences the media agenda (Carragee & Roefs, 2004). A sport gender frame sponsorship analysis revealed the continuance and dominance of negative gender frames in both public relations and media …

A Criterion Validity Study Of Individuals' Reports Of Gunfire And Recorded Gunfire, Sylvia Jane Sergent

Doctoral Dissertations

The focus of this study was the validation of people's reports of gunfire in two inner city neighborhoods in the Southeast. A survey design was used in which 342 people were interviewed by telephone. An ARIMA analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between people's gunfire reports and 58 days of ShotSpotter recordings. The results indicated that the percentage of residents reporting the presence of gunfire was a valid predictor of night gunfire. However, residents' reports of the actual number of gunshots did not appear valid. Reports of gunfire did not appear to have a statistically significant correlation with 911 …

Interpersonal Forgiveness: Longitudinal Analyses, Vidhya Iyer Kamat

Doctoral Dissertations

Most of the existing research on forgiveness so far has devoted considerable attention to the cross-sectional examination of forgiveness. The few existing longitudinal studies have primarily focused on investigating forgiveness following a treatment intervention. A relatively unexplored area in this literature concerns the examination of forgiveness over time in the absence of therapy. Also, little is known about the factors or mechanisms that might encourage or impede forgiveness both initially and subsequently.

Therefore the purpose of this research was to (a) explore the mechanisms that might influence forgiveness initially, (b) investigate the factors that might influence forgiveness subsequently, (c) examine …

Federal Funding And The New Regionalism: Blurring The Lines Of Federalism, Lori Adele Riverstone

Doctoral Dissertations

For decades urban planners and political scientists have attempted to deal with the problems associated with urbanization. Rapid population growth and the fragmentation of our metropolitan areas have caused ongoing and ever-increasing problems such as air, water, and land pollution; high crime rates; disparities in quality of education; a persistent racial divide; and traffic congestion, to name only a few. One solution, regionalism, gained grand-scale political support in the mid-twentieth century only to decline in the 1980s with the Reagan administration. In the 20 years leading up to Reagan's policy of devolution, the national government was invested in fostering multi-jurisdictional …

Aggression And The Big Five Personality Factors Of Grades And Attendance, Juan J. Barthelemy

Doctoral Dissertations

The focus of this study was to determine whether aggression adds incremental validity above and beyond the big five personality factors in predicting academic success. An archival data analysis was used in this study. The data \vas consisted of all of the eight grade students who were present when the data was collected in a middle school in the SoutheasteIl1 region of the United States. The students completed the Personal Style Inventory-Adolescent (PSI-A), which is a 120 item survey instrument designed to measure the big five personality factors and aggression. Results from this study indicated that aggression does in fact …

Resilience: Its Relationship To Forgiveness In Older Adults, Linda Cox Broyles

Doctoral Dissertations

This descriptive, correlational study investigated how psychological resilience might be associated with forgiveness in older adults. The population selected was a planned community in the southeastern United States; the majority of the 4,500 residents were over 50 years old, Caucasian, married, retired or semi-retired, and in reasonably good health. Having relocated to this community from all over our nation and from foreign countries and having achieved a generally high level of success on the average, these people brought with them a wide range of life’s experiences. A random sample of 900 was drawn from the community directory. Of these, 497 …

Factors Affecting Uses And Impacts Of Performance Measures In Mid-Sized U.S. Cites, Yeonsoo Chung

Doctoral Dissertations

This research investigates the factors that affect municipal use of and the impacts they experience with performance measures among mid-sizedU.S.cities. The goal of this research project is to advance our knowledge about the adoption, use, and impact of performance measures among mid-sized cities. Several research questions were developed and a mail survey was administered to 670 city officials in cities with populations 25,000 to 250,000 in order to help provide answers to these questions. A total of 280 completed surveys were returned for a response rate of about 42 percent.

Among the chief findings of this study are that larger …

Getting The User’S Attention, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

CAN WE DELIVER INFORMATION the way our users want it--cheap, fast, and good? According to Stewart Bodner, associate chief librarian of the New York Public Library, that's what users desire and what librarians and vendors must provide. But at least in the public library world, "convenience trumps quality every time," Bodner went on to tell the audience at the annual meeting of NFAIS (National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services) in Philadelphia this February. NFAIS brought together company representatives and librarians to brainstorm ways to redirect users away from Internet search engines and the open web and toward high-quality information.

East Asians’ Experience Of Sojourning In East Tennessee: A Phenomenological Investigation, Yoonmi Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand the experience of sojourning in East Tennessee by individuals from East Asia. Understanding the experience of these individuals is achieved through the descriptions of their own experiences in their own words. A qualitative method was used to understand the experiences of individuals who came from East Asian countries: China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, and who have lived in East Tennessee.

In phenomenological interviews, sixteen participants described their experiences of sojourning in East Tennessee. These interviews were audio-taped, transcribed, and then analyzed by an interpretive research group to identify common themes within and …

Constriction Behavior, A Key Innovation In Snake Evolution: The Integration Of Ethology And Physiology, Rita S. Mehta

Doctoral Dissertations

Among living tetrapod vertebrates, snakes exhibit the most radical shifts in feeding biology and among limbless squamate reptiles, only snakes have undergone a substantial adaptive radiation. The behavioral innovation, constriction, has been associated with the success of this clade. Constriction is a prey restraint behavior that enabled snakes to immobilize and subdue extremely large prey items relative to their own body mass. This behavior pattern is associated with the incredible shifts observed in snake feeding biology from consuming small meals frequently to less frequent feeding on large prey. Although constriction is an ethological homology for the majority of snakes, variations …

Serial Long Bone Histology: Inter- And Intra-Bone Age Estimation, Mariateresa Anne Tersigni

Doctoral Dissertations

Few publications report on histological differentiation within and between mammalian long bone cortices. Specifically, are osteon populations unique to proximal, midshaft or distal segments? First, this study tests Kerley’s (1965) quantification categories, i.e., number of osteons, fragments, and non-Haversian canals and percent circumferential lamellae, to estimate age and second, quantifies those micro-structural differences within and between human femur, tibia and fibula based upon section location. In an identical attempt to understand within-bone differences, i.e., proximal from distal, the same Kerley criteria were qualified and quantified within and between humeral, radial and ulnar diaphyses. However, no age estimation via Kerley was …

Empathy And The Mssw Curriculum: Are Students’ Levels Of Empathy Influenced By The Curriculum?, Melissa Rene Routh

Masters Theses

Empathy has been recognized as an important element in the helping profession, specifically within the field of social work. It has been acknowledged as an important component for promoting, restoring, maintaining, and enhancing clients’ well-being. Evaluation of empathy research has demonstrated contradictory conclusions about the impact of graduate education on students’ levels of empathy. While the social work curriculum assumes reciprocal empathic communication is an attained skill developed throughout the MSSW curriculum, little research has been conducted on the extent of empathic communication obtained through the social work curriculum. This study assessed the impact of graduate social work education on …

Essays On Intra-Industry Trade, Yanhong Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

Intra-industry trade (IIT) is one area in international trade that interests me very much. The pattern of world trade has been changing consistently over the last half century, in which the importance of intra-industry trade has increased significantly. Such a trade pattern change has consequences on domestic real economic variables due to the associated capital and labor adjustments. My dissertation sets out to identify the US static and dynamic trade patterns and investigate the determinants of US intra-industry trade. In the analytic part of the dissertation, I introduce capital accumulation and an innovation process into a North-South quality-based product cycle …

Mindfulness And Narrative: Connecting Experience And Story, Noah Lyons Roost

Masters Theses

Autobiographical narrative is the verbal summary of an individual's personal history. The quality of autobiographical narrative has been found to correlate with both emotional wellbeing (Oppenheim et al., 1997; Baerger & McAdams, 1999) and quality of social relationships (Van IJzendoorn, 1995; Shields et. al., 2001), and yet little has been done to examine other predictors or causes of narrative quality. Mindfulness training could potentially be a promising method of narrative enhancement. Mindfulness is the nonjudgmental, open awareness of what is currently occurring in the self and in the environment. Mindfulness is likely to promote open, objective awareness of new information …

Art In The Archives: A Survey Of Artists' Papers In Tennessee, Celia S. Walker

Masters Theses

This study is the first known survey of visual art materials housed in Tennessee's repositories. Little has been written about the arts materials in the state's repositories and no overview exists for art scholars. The purpose of the study was to create a profile of collecting in Tennessee of visual art materials in relation to policies, funding levels, and collection accessibility. It was determined that almost one-half of responding repositories in Tennessee maintain some visual art primary resources in their vertical files. The presence of collection policies and missions that speak directly to the need to collect art resources was …

Marriage Myths And Dysfunctional Relationship Beliefs Among Undergraduates, Mary Lynn Edmundson

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to (a) explore what single undergraduate university students who never have been married believe about romantic relationships and marriage myths; (b) determine if there were any gender differences, age differences, or differences between students from divorced and intact families of origin in beliefs in myths about marriage, as well as dysfunctional relationship beliefs; and (c) investigate the possibility of influence by sociodemographic variables on students’ beliefs about marriage. The sample for this study included 164 university students who were classified as undergraduates and who had never been married. Sociodemographic data indicated that 33% of …

The Transition To Neotraditionalism: The Case Of Huntersville, North Carolina, Kelley Ann Hall

Masters Theses

Troubled by the impacts associated with conventional development, the suburban community of Huntersville, North Carolina responded to metropolitan sprawl by adopting strict neotraditional development codes. Although a growing number of municipalities have begun to allow traditional neighborhood developments, few have completely reformed their zoning laws the way Huntersville did in the early 1990s. This thesis asked why Huntersville made the transition to neotraditionalism and what were the consequences of such a drastic step? A number of factors converged, including a rapid build-up of growth pressures and the timely arrival of new urbanist planning philosophies to spur Huntersville’s decision. Crucially, however, …

Psychometric Analysis Of An Inventory Assessing Mental Toughness, Heather Leanne Cherry

Masters Theses

This study involved the development and psychometric validation ofthe Mental Toughness Questionnaire (MTQ). The MTQ is an 18-item questionnaire designed to evaluate an individual's competitive desire, focus, self-confidence, and resiliency. The responses of 117 varsity male and female athletes at a Division I-A university and Division II college were analyzed using a principal component factor analysis. The mean mental toughness score for males was significantly different from than the mean mental toughness score for females (M=2.07, SD=.54) and indicated that males self-reported being more mentally tough than females (t[115] = -3.29, p < .001). The mean mental toughness score for athletes in Division I-A (M=2.03, SD= .51) was significantly different from that for athletes in Division II (M=I.69, SD=.37) and indicated that the Division II athletes self-reported being more mentally tough than Division I-A athletes (t[115] = 3.28, p < .001). The mean mental toughness score on the Final MTQ was also significantly different between the eight different sports, F(7,116) = 2.87, p = .009. Post hoc analyses revealed that athletes in the sport of men's baseball self-reported being more mentally tough than athletes in the sport ofwomen's swimming

Transportation And Transformations: An Archaeological And Historical Study Of The Mcbrearty Site (40kn270) And Carriage Houses In The North Knoxville Area, Greta Jill Gomez

Masters Theses

The McBrearty site is located on the northeast corner of West Glenwood and East Scott Avenues in Old North Knoxville, an area of the city that developed as part of the incorporated city of North Knoxville in 1889. Situated on the site is the McBrearty home, a Victorian Queen Anne Cottage built in 1892, and the architectural remains of a carriage house located at the rear of the property. While the McBrearty house has undergone few architectural changes since its construction, all that remains of the carriage house are thirteen brick piers protruding from the earth in the rear yard. …

The Effects Of Depressive Symptomology On Women’S Childbearing Considerations, Andrea Darlene Marable

Masters Theses

Empirical literature dedicated to pursuing knowledge of the relationship between women who suffer from depression and their considerations of childbearing is lacking. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study was to determine the types of relationships that exist between depressive symptomology in women and their childbearing considerations.

Secondary data analysis was the chosen form of research analysis, and the National Survey of Families and Households (Wave 1) was the data set employed. There were a total of four independent variables (depressive symptomology, global life satisfaction, global optimism, and self-esteem) and two dependent variables (10 constraint items and 4 motivational factor …

The Health Status Of Early 20th Century Blacks From The Providence Baptist Church Cemetery (40sy619) In Shelby County, Tennessee, Rebecca J. Wilson

Masters Theses

Paleopathological investigations of health are an important component in the construction of a population’s history. Such studies make possible analyses regarding Black health in the late 19^{th and early 20th centuries, a time period where the availability of relevant and objective literature is limited. Also, these investigations permit a comparison between similar populations to determine the extent to which the demographic, social, economic, and political conditions of this time period affect a specific population.}

This study compares the Providence Baptist Church cemetery in Shelby County, Tennessee to two contemporary historic Black cemeteries in order to address an urban versus …

Hot Topic: Mtas Salary And Fringe Benefit Survey (2004/2005), Richard Stokes

MTAS Publications: Hot Topics

The MTAS annual salary and fringe benefit survey contains a summary of the
findings as well as a means to request specific information.

Your Municipal Code: Adopting It And Keeping It Up-To-Date, Steve Lobertini

MTAS Publications: Full Publications

This guide explains code adoption and requirements and how to keep municipal codes current.

Records Management For Municipal Governments: A Reference Guide For City Officials And Municipal Public Records Custodians, Dennis Huffer

MTAS Publications: Full Publications

A basic summary of laws, regulations and practices regarding records management by city governmental offices.