The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of varying the amount of participant engagement on alcohol expectancy and drinking outcomes during a social/sexual expectancy challenge based on Darkes and Goldman's (1993, 1998) protocol. This study was also intended to provide a test of the efficacy of administering an alcohol/placebo expectancy challenge outside of a live drinking scenario through video presented as part of a computerized intervention. One hundred fifty-eight male participants across three sites were randomized into a no-intervention control group that received non alcohol-related information in a minimally interactive computerized format, a low-level engagement experimental group that received minimally interactive computerized expectancy-related information, and a high-level engagement experimental group that received the same expectancy-related information presented in a more interactive computerized format that included games and audiovisual elements such as video clips, graphics, live narrations, and music. It was hypothesized that high-level engagement participants would report being more engaged in their computerized program and demonstrate greater decreases in social/sexual alcohol expectancies and drinking levels relative to control and low-level engagement participants. Results indicated that while high-level engagement participants reported being more engaged in their interventions, none of the groups exhibited changes in the alcohol expectancies measured. In addition, all three groups experienced significant but comparable decreases in drinking levels. Exploratory follow-up analyses were also conducted to provide suggestions for future directions.

National cultures play a critical role in effective leadership and organisational success in international businesses. Contemporary organisations are therefore challenged by cross-cultural leadership needs to address increasing diversity. In the past decades, there has been a growing interest in studies of non-Western leadership. Recent papers have focused particularly on leadership in the Asia-Pacific region. This paper compares leadership in China and New Zealand, based on the data collected by using the GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness) project leadership questionnaire. In addition, the paper reviews the main findings of previous research in order to investigate the similarities and differences in preferred leadership behaviours/characteristics in both cultures, while attempting to examine the consistency of current findings against the previous GLOBE studies. Significant differences of leadership behaviours between China and New Zealand have been identified. This paper generally supports the findings of previous GLOBE studies that charismatic/value-based leadership is the universally contributing factor towards outstanding leadership and self-protective leadership is the universally negative factor against leadership excellence. Findings in this paper may contribute to further understanding of leadership practice in these two countries. Future research should be undertaken to examine the effects of cultural differences on organisational practice by a more comprehensive research method.

Identification of nonlinear dynamical models of a black box nature involves both structure decisions (i.e., which regressors to use and the selection of a regressor function), and the estimation of the parameters involved. The typical approach in system identification is often a mix of all these steps, which for example means that the selection of regressors is based on the fits that is achieved for different choices. Alternatively one could then interpret the regressor selection as based on hypothesis tests (F-tests) at a certain confidence level that depends on the data. It would in many cases be desirable to decide which regressors to use, independently of the other steps. A survey of regressor selection methods used for linear regression and nonlinear identification problems is given. In this thesis we investigate what the well known method of analysis of variance (ANOVA) can offer for this problem. System identification applications violate many of the ideal conditions for which ANOVA was designed and we study how the method performs under such non-ideal conditions. It turns out that ANOVA gives better and more homogeneous results compared to several other regressor selection methods. Some practical aspects are discussed, especially how to categorise the data set for the use of ANOVA, and whether to balance the data set used for structure identification or not. An ANOVA-based method, Test of Interactions using Layout for Intermixed ANOVA (TILIA), for regressor selection in typical system identification problems with many candidate regressors is developed and tested with good performance on a variety of simulated and measured data sets. Typical system identification applications of ANOVA, such as guiding the choice of linear terms in the regression vector and the choice of regime variables in local linear models, are investigated. It is also shown that the ANOVA problem can be recast as an optimisation problem. Two modified, convex versions of the ANOVA optimisation problem are then proposed, and it turns out that they are closely related to the nn-garrote and wavelet shrinkage methods, respectively. In the case of balanced data, it is also shown that the methods have a nice orthogonality property in the sense that different groups of parameters can be computed independently.

Draper and Guttman (1997) show that for basic 2^{k-p}designs, p >= 0, k-p replicates of blocks designs of size two are needed to estimate all the usual (estimable) effects. In Chapter 1, we provide an algebraic formal proof for the two-level blocks designs results and present results applicable to the general case; that is, for the case of s^{k} factorial (p=0) or s^{k-p}ractional factorial (p>0) designs in s^{b} blocks, where 0<b<k-p, at least (k-p)/(k-p-b) replicates are needed to clear up all possible effects. Through the theoretical development presented in this work, it can provide a clearer view on why those results would hold. We will also discuss the estimation equations given in Draper and Guttman (1997). In Chapter 2, we present a methodology for analyzing the variability of the radiated emission testings of electronic, elecommunication and information technology equipment based on a modified analysis of variance (ANOVA), with polynomial regression analysis. In our study, three electronic products; modem, monitor and notebook bought from the market are tested. Through the experiment, we show that the international standard fails to provide a methodology which gives control limits for EMC when the electronic products in question are produced. We feel that an improved EMC control procedure presented here can better meet the needs of radiated emission control.

While evaluating the depth of corrosive defect through Remote Field Eddy Current (RFEC) Testing technology, the researcher tried to investigate the signals of supporting plate which may produce variations by the thickness of supporting plate, diameter of tube hole in supporting plate, the value of crevice between tube and tube hole and tube wall thickness. Errors of evaluation of defect depth may consequently be identified or measured by the variations of the support plate signal. This study explores the effects of above four factors by experiments and an analysis of variance in statistics. By the analysis of experimental results, the researcher found the four influential factors would cause angle deviation of supporting plate signals. Except the factor of tube wall thickness, the deviation is not so substantial that the difference of evaluation in depth was consequently fallen into an acceptable range of engineering practices. When utilizing the remote field eddy current testing technique to test inservice tubes, the researcher found the thickness of inservice tube is normally different from the specified thickness of a standard tube. This variation consequently resulting in an evaluation curve produced by a standard tube may not lead to proper assessment of defects in inservice tube. To deal with the problem many researchers used a frequency compensation method to compensate for the evaluation error contributed by the variation of tube thickness on the basis of the standard ASTM E2096-00(2000). But the use of the frequency compensation method did not measure the inservice tube thickness and thus produced a drawback of consuming much time for the adjustment steps of compensation. Therefore, a mathematical compensation method was introduced in this study for the compensation of thickness variation derived from skin depth theory. This method in the present experiment is proven to be both feasible and reasonable through the derivation of the methodology. Generally, this study aims to apply the mathematical compensation method to overcome the drawback of frequency compensation method and to solve the problem of the difficulty in measuring inservice tube wall thickness in heat exchanger bundles.

The pharmacy industry in Taiwan has produced a succession of great changes in recent years, for example: The National Health Insurance, the division of medical treatment & medication, Join the World Trade Organization(WTO) which were putting into practice. However, the competent authority which protects the medicine price and nuclear price policying, bringing a large impact to the pharmaceutical factory. So the promotion sales are effected first. So, for be able to improve the sales¡¦ performance & understand the releationship of human resources management activities & sales¡¦ performance, this research attempts to take one pharmacy company for an example, and using Multiple Regression Anylysis to research the effect of Selection, Traing & Education, Salary & Welfare, Position Alternation & Employees Participating to Sales Amount, Achievement Rat of Sales, Leave Application & Customer Developing. Besides this, it also using the Analysis of Variance to understand the difference of sales¡¦ performance under the situation of Cost Reducing & Human Resource Promoting. So according to the Multiple Regression Anylysis & Analysis of Variance, this research get the results as follow: 1.Traing & Education, Salary & Welfare, Employees Participating, the three Human Resource Management Activities have the significance effect to Sales¡¦ Performance. So the hypothesis H-1, H1-3 & H1-5 are all supported. 2.Selection also has the significance effect to Sales¡¦ Performance, but not all of factors can anticipate the Sales¡¦ Performance. So in accordance with the hypothesis H1-1 just present a partical supported result. 3.Position Alternation just has the significance effect to Sales Amount, Leave Application & Customer Developing, but not has the significance effect to Achievement Rat of Sales. So in accordance with the hypothesis H1-4 just present a partical supported result. 4.Under the difference Type of Human Resource Management, The sales¡¦s performance not only has the significance effect to Sales Amount & Customer Developing, but also has the higher performance. However, there are no significance about this difference. So in accordance with the hypothesis H2-1 & H2-2 just present a partical supported result. According to above-mentioned results, if we want to enhance some of sales¡¦ performances, we should enforance some of the optional human resources activities. This research also discover that: The higher salary & welfare structure & The type of human resources promoting, which have the significance effect to increase the sales¡¦ performance.

In this thesis, we first show that the performance of ranking and selection (R&S) procedures in steady-state simulations depends highly on the quality of the variance estimates that are used. We study the performance of R&S procedures using three variance estimators --- overlapping area, overlapping Cramer--von Mises, and overlapping modified jackknifed Durbin--Watson estimators --- that show better long-run performance than other estimators previously used in conjunction with R&S procedures for steady-state simulations. We devote additional study to the development of the new overlapping modified jackknifed Durbin--Watson estimator and demonstrate some of its useful properties. Next, we consider the problem of finding the best simulated system under a primary performance measure, while also satisfying stochastic constraints on secondary performance measures, known as constrained ranking and selection. We first present a new framework that allows certain systems to become dormant, halting sampling for those systems as the procedure continues. We also develop general procedures for constrained R&S that guarantee a nominal probability of correct selection, under any number of constraints and correlation across systems. In addition, we address new topics critical to efficiency of the these procedures, namely the allocation of error between feasibility check and selection, the use of common random numbers, and the cost of switching between simulated systems.

This thesis consists of two parts. The first part reviews a Variable Search, a variable selection procedure for mean modeling. The second part deals with variance modeling for robust parameter design in computer experiments. In the first chapter of my thesis, Variable Search (VS) technique developed by Shainin (1988) is reviewed. VS has received quite a bit of attention from experimenters in industry. It uses the experimenters' knowledge about the process, in terms of good and bad settings and their importance. In this technique, a few experiments are conducted first at the best and worst settings of the variables to ascertain that they are indeed different from each other. Experiments are then conducted sequentially in two stages, namely swapping and capping, to determine the significance of variables, one at a time. Finally after all the significant variables have been identified, the model is fit and the best settings are determined. The VS technique has not been analyzed thoroughly. In this report, we analyze each stage of the method mathematically. Each stage is formulated as a hypothesis test, and its performance expressed in terms of the model parameters. The performance of the VS technique is expressed as a function of the performances in each stage. Based on this, it is possible to compare its performance with the traditional techniques. The second and third chapters of my thesis deal with variance modeling for robust parameter design in computer experiments. Computer experiments based on engineering models might be used to explore process behavior if physical experiments (e.g. fabrication of nanoparticles) are costly or time consuming. Robust parameter design (RPD) is a key technique to improve process repeatability. Absence of replicates in computer experiments (e.g. Space Filling Design (SFD)) is a challenge in locating RPD solution. Recently, there have been studies (e.g. Bates et al. (2005), Chen et al. (2006), Dellino et al. (2010 and 2011), Giovagnoli and Romano (2008)) of RPD issues on computer experiments. Transmitted variance model (TVM) proposed by Shoemaker and Tsui. (1993) for physical experiments can be applied in computer simulations. The approaches stated above rely heavily on the estimated mean model because they obtain expressions for variance directly from mean models or by using them for generating replicates. Variance modeling based on some kind of replicates relies on the estimated mean model to a lesser extent. To the best of our knowledge, there is no rigorous research on variance modeling needed for RPD in computer experiments. We develop procedures for identifying variance models. First, we explore procedures to decide groups of pseudo replicates for variance modeling. A formal variance change-point procedure is developed to rigorously determine the replicate groups. Next, variance model is identified and estimated through a three-step variable selection procedure. Properties of the proposed method are investigated under various conditions through analytical and empirical studies. In particular, impact of correlated response on the performance is discussed.

Thesis--University of Oklahoma. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-65).

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