Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Crew: The South Shore Community's Response To Youth Unemployment, Joan Marie Payne Hill

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Rater Accuracy In A Job Simulation Oral Examination For Entry Level Supervisors, Robert L. Holmgren

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

An Examination Of The Lazare-Klerman-Armor Personality Inventory As A Measure Of Normal Histrionic Personality Style, Mark Joseph Groberski

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Coexistence Of Eating Disorders And Substance Use: A Spectrum Of Eating Disorders Based On A Dimension Of Severity, Suzanne Fechner-Bates

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

From Parent To Child: The Effects Of A Home Learning Program On Attitudes And Achievements, Linda Linstrom Baker Edd

Dissertations

Literacy is shared value in our culture, yet many adults are unable or unwilling to read. Research indicates that the beginnings of literacy occur long before formal education. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of the Preschool Reading Experience Program on the attitudes and pre-reading skills of four- and five-year-old children. The subjects were 96 children enrolled in four San Diego preschools, and their parents. The methodology was quasi-experimental with a treatment and a control group. Interactions of sex, age, and type of preschool were also considered. Results of the quantitative data indicated that children who …

Organizational Change In Action: A Qualitative Case Study Of Usair's Acquisition Of Pacific Southwest Airlines, Joan A. Miszak Edd

Dissertations

Five dominant theories of organizational change have emerged from the literature. Each of these models expressly expand on a singular and specific paradigm of how change can be viewed within organizations. The models of change are the micro-personal-therapeutic, meso-rational-managerial, meso-systems-organic, macro-cultural-symbolic and macro-political-economic. While the contemporary literature on organizational change has done much to further our understanding about the future of organizational change, very few works provide us with case study examples of organizational change in action. Missing is an understanding of what facilitators of change actually do in the process of change. The present study sought to provide a …

The Effect Of Art Education On Self-Concept Of Disabled Adult Students In A Community College Setting, James Joseph Harrington Edd

Dissertations

This study examined the effect of art education on self-concept of disabled adult students in a community college setting. An experimental, pretest-posttest, control group design was utilized to carry out the study. The treatment provided was a college art class involving painting, clay sculpturing, and drawing. The null hypothesis tested was that art education has no effect on self-concept in disabled adult students. The alternative hypothesis was that art education improves self-concept in disabled adult students. A non-replacement random sample of 30 participants from a population of 250 disabled adult volunteers was selected and divided into an experimental and a …

Think Globally, Act Locally: A Delphi Study Of Educational Leadership Through The Development Of International Resources In The Local Community, Stuart R. Grauer Edd

Dissertations

The probable future of international resource development in the local school community for the years leading up to 2000 was researched using the Delphi method--the best available tool for building consensus in emerging fields. A panel of 28 identified experts in elementary and secondary schools and districts from Southern California in the field of school-community relations with demonstrable experience in international education completed three rounds of surveys. The surveys served to identify (1) educational resource people who could bring constructive change communitywide, (2) program developments and school-community partnerships, (3) practical and philosophical goals for fusing international, national, community and academic …

Leadership And Culture, Richard L. Henrickson Edd

Dissertations

This study is about the phenomenon of leadership. Existing studies of leadership have failed to address the complex, multidisciplinary, processual, and collective nature of leadership. Attempts to appear scientific have focused on the forms of leadership rather than its universal processes. Following an analysis of existing theories of leadership viewed from disciplinary frames, the purpose of this study is to propose a new theory of leadership constructed within a cultural frame. The nature of leadership can be understood best when it is defined as a cultural expression containing complex sets of interdependent variables. Insofar as the study presents a cultural …

A Delphi Study Of California Community College Counselors' Responsibilities And Competencies For The 1990'S As Perceived By Chief Student Services Administrators, Noelia Vela Edd

Dissertations

California's demographic changes and recent legislative reform mandates will impact what community college counselors will be expected to do in the 1990's. The purpose of this study was to identify the responsibilities and competencies of California community college counselors in light of the changes. The Delphi Method, selected for its consensus-building and forecasting qualities, was used for this study. A panel of 23 chief student services administrators, identified as experts in student services and counseling, completed three rounds of surveys. The Delphi instruments were developed to address counselor responsibilities and associated competencies for the 1990's, staff development needs of currently …

An Analysis Of The Special Education Services For Children And Youth In Costa Rica, Beatriz Villarreal Edd

Dissertations

An analysis of Costa Rica special education services was developed with the objective of analyzing its school programs, its university teacher training programs and the quality overall of services provided in the country. Program indicators of quality special education services were delineated with the purpose of comparing the degree to which these indicators were present in the special education programs of Costa Rica. Questionnaires, interviews, observations, and a review of literature were used to obtain a comprehensive description of special education services in Costa Rica. A quality special education school was subsequently designed based on the quality educational programs indicators …

A Study Of The Impact Of A Quality Circle On A Public Secondary School In Southern California, Ronald E. Williams Edd

Dissertations

The goal of this research was to establish a quality circle at a Southern California public high school and to determine what effect the quality circle process would have on problem resolution and communication at that specific institution. The circle was composed of eight faculty members who volunteered plus an administrator who served as the facilitator. The circle met weekly for one school year. The objectives of this study were twofold. The first was to utilize the quality circle as a process to identify, analyze, and solve specific school concerns selected by quality circle members. The second objective was to …

The Impact Of Oppressive Military-Political Governments On School Effectiveness In Uganda, 1971 To 1986, Daniel M. Babigumira Edd

Dissertations

How and why did the Ugandan educational system survive the political and economic instability of the dictatorial governments between 1971 and 1986? What did the school administrators do to make sure that the nation's schools survive the political turmoil? The purpose of this researcher was to determine the impact of oppressive military and political governments on schools. Secondly, the researcher wanted to determine the extent to which the school administrators acted as instructional leaders in ensuring that the school effectiveness survived the enormous political constraints during this period. Four research questions explored qualitative interview data from the school administrators, reputationally …

A Study Of The Relationship Between Subjective Mental Health And Psychological Maturity, Carol Fuchs Kaufman

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Athletic Involvement During Early Adolescence: Factors Affecting Sports Participation And The Effects Of Athleticism On Perceptions Of The Self, Carol E. Kirshnit

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Development Of A Personalized Computer Assisted School Psychology (Casp) System, Patricia Lou Steinert

Dissertations

The purpose of this project was to develop a model computer system to assist school psychologists in managing and manipulating data accumulated in the course of accomplishing their professional responsibilities. School psychologists have traditionally generated large amounts of data, but rarely have they looked across these data to obtain information and/or feedback about their own functioning relative to their professional role. The system described is intended as a model from which an individual psychologist might construct a system to meet individual needs. Data across students were accumulated in four broad areas: (1) personal effectiveness/accountability, (2) diagnosis, (3) local test norms, …

A Pilot Test Of The Career Adjustment And Development Inventory As A Career Needs Analysis Technique, Richard W. Zinser

Dissertations

A review of the career development literature in current journals revealed several important trends that accentuate the need for additional career services for working adults. Moreover, assessment techniques currently used are transparent and rely mainly on participants' self perceptions. A new career inventory (Crites, 1982), which is based on a taxonomy of adult career problems, has been developed to measure the career adjustment of establishment stage individuals. The instrument was developed as a more effective assessment instrument for the purpose of uncovering employee needs, and for designing appropriate career development programs.

The Career Adjustment and Development Inventory (CADI) was administered …

An Analogue Of Science, Michael Albert Minervini

Dissertations

There is no science of human behavior, not even an incipient one. The popular conception of applied behavior analysis as a genuine principle-driven technology is mostly an illusion. Two sorts of evidence support this conclusion. The first is an ever widening split between the field's basic and applied realms. The second, thus far unacknowledged, is that when the concepts of operant and respondent conditioning are extended to human behavior, they are often rendered as no more than metaphors. These metaphors are not confined to casual discourse or even to interpretation. In fact, they are the prevailing form of extension in …

The Psychological Needs Of Sex Offenders Of Children As Measured By The Personality Research Form, Shirley Anne Miller

Dissertations

Major contributors in the field of child sexual abuse have agreed that sex offenders who sexually abuse children are not primarily motivated by sexual desire and have proposed that the simultaneous satisfaction of a number of psychological needs is the prominent motivation of sex offenders of children. Few attempts have been made to empirically validate the clinical and theoretical impressions regarding the psychological needs of this group using psychological measures designed to assess needs or motives.

The purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent the assumptions about the psychological needs of sex offenders of children would be …

Self-Control In Mentally Retarded Adolescents: Choice As A Function Of Amount And Delay Of Reinforcement, Steven P. Ragotzy

Dissertations

Three severely mentally retarded adolescents were studied under discrete-trial procedures in which a choice was arranged between edible reinforcers that differed in magnitude and, in some conditions, delay. In the absence of delays, the larger reinforcer was consistently chosen. All subjects directed the majority of choice responses to the smaller reinforcer when the larger reinforcer was sufficiently delayed, although the value at which this occurred differed across subjects. Under conditions where the larger reinforcer initially was sufficiently delayed to result in preference for the smaller one, progressively increasing in 5-s increments the delay to both reinforcers increased percent trials with …

Effects Of Task Difficulty, Performance Consequence, And Social Interaction On Physiological Reactivity In Post-Coronary Patients, A. Janelle Maldonado

Dissertations

Three experiments were performed to determine the effects of three task variables and Type A behavior pattern on physiological reactivity to time-limited math and anagram tasks. In the first experiment, ten post-coronary patients performed time-limited computer tasks under two performance consequence conditions: Point Reward or presentation of an Auditory Blast combined with two task difficulty conditions (40% and 60% difficult). The findings of Experiment 1 indicated that while the tasks did produce levels of physiological reactivity comparable to those observed in the literature, there were no significant main effects for either variable for any of the five measures. A significant …

Construct Validation Of The Family Of Origin Scale: A Factor Analysis, Omar L. Mangrum

Dissertations

The major purpose of this two-part study was to contribute to the body of knowledge concerned with the construct validity of the Family of Origin Scale (FOS). The issues of construct and discriminative validity were specifically addressed. The first phase was an attempt to empirically establish the underlying factor structure of the Family of Origin Scale (FOS) through factor analytic techniques. The analysis utilized data collected from a previously studied population (i.e., college students) and a demographically different population (i.e., prison inmates). Results from this study indicate that the FOS appears to measure at least seven distinct factors/constructs, four of …

An Evaluation Of An Intervention Program For Juvenile Probationers, Kevin I. Minor

Dissertations

Although the efficacy of correctional rehabilitation was questioned during the early 1970s, recent research has demonstrated that certain intervention programs, when implemented under appropriate conditions, are effective in reducing illegal behavior. The objective of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of a court-based intervention for juvenile probationers.

The program was developed on the basis of caseworkers' assessments of youths' problems and needs. The theoretical perspective underlying the intervention consisted of a joint combination of critical, social control, and differential association theories. A major implication of theory is that the juvenile court's capacity to facilitate informal social control should be …

The Effectiveness Of Feedback Procedures On Machine Set-Up Time In A Manufacturing Setting, Connie J. Wittkopp

Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a treatment package designed to improve and maintain set-up time in the extrusion department of a rubber manufacturing company. Subjects were exposed to various behavioral techniques including training and a feedback system in the form of both written and verbal supervisory comments with an emphasis placed on improving performance through use of videotaping. An attempt was made to maintain treatment gains by teaching supervisors how to give information concerning set-up performance to their employees. Results indicate that average weekly set-up times for each machine were significantly below baseline …

Evaluation Of A Psychoeducational Curriculum For Promoting Psychological Health And Self-Esteem, Michele Susan Meola

Dissertations

This study was designed to investigate the effectiveness of a psychoeducational curriculum in psychological health skills, entitled Psychological Health and Self-Esteem (PHSE). The study evaluated PHSE which is a 10-week class offered through the Psychology Department at Michigan State University, East Lansing, and is part of the Health Promotion Program, partially funded by a Kellogg Foundation grant.

Two hundred students participated in the study, and complete data were obtained from 117, 56 of them enrolled in PHSE and 61 enrolled in a different class designated as a control group. The design of the study was a pretest-posttest quasi-experiment with a …

Psychotherapists' Responses To Anger Manifested By Female Clients, Lisa L. Morshead

Dissertations

The responses of therapists to anger directed at them by female clients was the topic under investigation. Sixty-nine professional therapists were engaged as subjects, with each therapist reading two fictitious transcripts depicting the first portion of a therapy session. The two transcripts portrayed an angry client and a nonangry client, with client sex varied in each condition for a total of four transcripts. Each subject read both an angry and nonangry transcript of either two male or two female clients. Subjects were then asked to rate the client on competence, and interpersonal functioning, along with providing diagnostic impressions. A four …

Effects Of Terminal-Link Response Topography On Choice Behavior Under Concurrent-Chains Schedules, Stephen P. Starin

Dissertations

Previous research has indicated that both absolute response rate and choice behavior differs under concurrent chains requiring different terminal-link responses, even when the reinforcement schedules are nominally identical. To date, no studies have investigated responding under concurrent chains with unequal schedules and different topographies arranged in the terminal links. Moreover, although the delay-reduction hypothesis has been widely tested using concurrent chains in which the same response topography is required in all links, the generality of the delay-reduction hypothesis in describing performance when different terminal-link topographies are required has yet to be examined. The present study was designed to address both …

Stimulus Overselectivity: An Investigation Of Determinants, Margaret T. Mcglinchey

Dissertations

Stimulus overselectivity refers to a phenomenon in which, after discrimination training with a multiple component stimulus, behavior fails to come under the control of all of the components of the stimulus. After a screening process based on past research, a group of children with specific learning disabilities was categorized into one of two groups: overselective and non-overselective. Both groups were exposed to training and testing for generalization. All children in both groups evidenced "stimulus overselectivity" during these tests for generalization. Generalization training subsequently reduced stimulus overselectivity for all students. There were few differences between the two groups. The results suggest …

The Effects Of Participative Management On Teacher Satisfaction During Periods Of Organizational Decline, Robert Michael O'Brien

Dissertations

Public school teachers and administrators are increasingly challenged to demonstrate effectiveness in the face of organizational decline. A management system proposed by researchers in organizational development to promote worker effectiveness is participatory management. This study investigated the effects of participatory management as they related to teacher satisfaction and productivity during organizational decline. Two local school districts that used a participatory management system, identified as Quality of Work Life (QWL) districts, were studied. Two similar local school districts that did not use a participatory management system were also studied. The results of the analysis indicate that there were no significant differences …

A Study Of Factors Correlated With Career Persistence Of Male Pastors In The Free Methodist Church In Michigan, Robert Q. Bailey

Dissertations

The research objective was to create a descriptive profile of clergypersons who are persisting in career roles as pastors of the Free Methodist Church in Michigan.

An original instrument was administered to 113 male pastors, soliciting biographical data (age, pastoral tenure, educational background, statistical growth of churches served, family background, health and influences in career decisions) and responses to fifty value statements about the pastors' careers. The value statements were applications of ideas from the "Motivation-Hygiene" theory of career satisfaction and more individualized concepts as reinforcers of personal needs.

Attempts to describe the persisting pastors by correlating tenure to their …