The aim of this study was to provide an understanding of the situation of an often forgotten group in foster care, the carers’ own children. Our main focus was to explore this group’s experience of foster care, their experience of participating in caring for the foster children and their possible need of support and help. Our chosen method was qualitative interviews with six adult children of foster carers, two men and four women. The theory used in this study was Sense of Coherence. Our interviewees mainly gave a positive description of being part of a foster family, however they also gave examples of difficult situations and of loss. All of them gave different examples of how they had participated in the care of foster children, such as babysitting, defending foster siblings in school and supporting them. Despite their overall positive memories most of them wished they had been offered better support, preferably counseling with advice on how to act in difficult situations. The need for better information, as well as education about why the foster children act as they do, seemed important to the interviewees.

The sense of calling has emerged as a burgeoning research interest for the past decade due to its tight connection to the meaning of work. However, the mechanism of the sense of calling, especially how it works in the work context remains unclear. This study aims at enhancing the understanding and knowledge of what the concept of calling is and how to apply it into organizations. Therefore, a cross-level model was proposed and the antecedents and consequences of calling along with the influence of organizational factors were examined. Data were collected from 24 organizations consisted of 186 employees, and hierarchical linear modeling techniques were applied to test the hypotheses. As a result, it is found that with certain personality traits (i.e., Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness), one¡¦s sense of calling is more easily to be discovered. On the other hand, it is also likely to foster or develop one¡¦s sense of calling through organization¡¦s manipulation (i.e., the emphasis of CSR and the supportive climate). More importantly, the positive impact of sense of calling on an individual¡¦s performance has been demonstrated. Consequently, by considering both organizational-level and individual-level factors into the mechanism of calling, a valuable insight and application of an individual¡¦s sense of calling in the work context have been established.

As a method of marketing communications between companies and consumers, packages serve as a ¡§spokesperson¡¨ of the product on the point-of-sale. These may have significant impacts on the process of consumers¡¦ purchase decisions. Consumers also make inferences from the products packages, and the location of the product image on a package facade was one of the factors that influences consumers¡¦ perceptions of the visual heaviness of the product and evaluations of the package, which is called ¡§product image location effect.¡¨ Based on previous studies on the product image location effect, this study distinguished the product image locations into two places: perceived as heavy or light. Furthermore, three types of sensation cues (¡§vision-only¡¨, ¡§vision and touch simultaneously¡¨, and ¡§vision then touch¡¨) are considered in this study in order to understand how the product image location effect works. In addition, individual differences in need for touch (NFT) is also incorporated into this research to examine how it may sway the results of product image location effect and consumers¡¦ confidence when judging products. The present study employed an experimental design to investigate the effects of product image location (bottom-right vs. top-left), the type of sensation cues (vision-only vs. vision and touch simultaneously vs. vision then touch), and autotelic need for touch (low vs. medium vs. high) on consumers¡¦ evaluation of perceived product heaviness and confidence in product judgments. A 2x3x3 factorial design was conducted. Six different scenarios were established through virtual packages and different sensation inputs. A quantile method was used to distinguish consumers into low, medium and high autotelic NFT. Consumers¡¦ evaluation was measured by perceived product heaviness and confidence in product judgments. The results indicated that when there was a tactile input, the product image location effect would disappear. Besides, compared to those who were medium and high in autotelic NFT, product image location effect was more influential on those who were low in autotelic NFT. In addition, in vision-only condition, location of the product image influenced consumers¡¦ confidence in product judgment. According to these findings, this research contributes to the further understandings of product image location effect and provides implications for researchers and marketers on package design.

A quantitative research study was conducted with teenagers attending Bandina Christian Youth Camp for one week in the summer of 2008. Students were divided into two groups; a control group and an intervention group. All participants were given a Self- Reflective Survey immediately prior to and following the week of summer camp. In addition to the pre- and post- Self-Reflective Surveys, the intervention group was required to complete Gallup's StrengthsQuest assessment (to determine his/her five greatest strengths) and e-mail those findings to this researcher before the first camp session. Once at camp, the intervention group participated in a five day Faith Based Strengths Training class one hour a day. The intervention group recognized and identified all 34 strengths, learned the uniqueness of his/her top five strengths, identified and related to famous individuals and their strengths and explored optimal career fields that best correlated to the participants' top five strengths. Strengths Training proved to be an effective tool in changing the intervention group's self confidence, sense of direction and his or her personal desire to learn more about Strengths collectively with a .03 p at an alpha level of .05. Youth based national organizations such as Boys & Girls Club, Boys Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H, Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) and others could greatly enhance their programs by incorporating Strengths Training into their curriculum, as Strengths Training builds on the development of core values, positive self image and character development that all of these national organizations strive to provide the youth of today. The summer camp experience offers a distinct opportunity for learning and exploration. This unique educational atmosphere sets up a positive cognitive environment where youth are typically more receptive to learning new concepts and ideas. The intervention group outcomes for this quantitative research study resulted in a positive outcome with only five hours of training. This infers a positive impact to not only the Y generation, but future generations to come and raises the need for more research in how these youth based national organizations can not only implement Strengths Training into their existing programs but network Strengths Training.

When our society evolved into industrial era, people started to gather in cities. It caused some problems, such as lack of interaction with neighbors and awareness of community belonging. However, to construct a harmonious, merry, mutually supportive community, some people start to think about how to strengthen the sense of community and improve their living environment. One important element to awaken the sense of community is to increase the communication opportunities of community residents, so that they can develop the feeling of the ¡§community¡¨. Furthermore, to run a ¡§community association¡¨ is one of the ways not only to attract them to join in and to keep in touch with each others, but also to elevate the living quality of the community. In order to promote the culture of the community and to strengthen the sense of community among the habitants, the ¡§QingFeng Community Development Committee¡¨ formed the ¡§QingFeng Community Chinese Orchestra¡¨ in June 2005. The purposes of this study are to present the management problems of ¡§QingFeng Community Chinese Orchestra,¡¨ and to draw up a strategic plan and an operational model for the orchestra. The CORPS model proposed by Dr. Dah-Hsian Seetoo is applied in this case to analyze the problems the orchestra. The researcher, furthermore, suggest several short- and mid-long-term strategies in response to those problems. The result of this study shows that: the ¡§Clients¡¨ of a community's orchestra including of the community residents and its members. The administrator of an orchestra must give consideration to both sides; the ¡§Operations¡¨ are the key elements for an orchestra to run persistently. Having a good operational procedure can make the administrative work carry out smoothly; the ¡§Resources,¡¨ which including money, material, and manpower, are the important foundation to run a community orchestra, The administrator of an orchestra should seek for resources from both inside and outside the community; the ¡§Participants¡¨ is the most sensitive subject in a community orchestra. How the atmosphere of an orchestra is depended on the manager¡¦s working attitude and style; the ¡§Services¡¨ of a community orchestra should be set up along with the demands of the community residents and its member. An orchestra must offer different services to different people. In addition, a strategic planning is a top-down approach to reconstruct an organization. Only when the manager can proceed it with full agreement, the strategic planning can be successfully executed. There are only few researches regarding to community orchestras in Taiwan, which makes an administrator very difficult to run one. Therefore, the researchers in the relevant departments should carry on exploring towards this topic.

The present study investigated the role of gender, sense of coherence and total physical activity in positive and negative affect. The participants were 376 (169 female, 206 male, and 1 missing value) volunteered students from different faculties of Middle East Technical University. Three questionnaires, namely, Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC), Physical Activity Assessment Questionnaire (PAAQ), and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) were administered to the students together with the demographic information sheet. Two separate stepwise multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the predictive power of gender (coded as dummy variable), sense of coherence and total physical activity on positive and negative affect scores. Results revealed that, sense of coherence and total physical activity predicted the positive affect whereas sense of coherence predicted the negative affect of university students. Findings are discussed in the light of sense of coherence, physical activity and positive and negative affect literature.

In this thesis, cross-lingual information retrieval (CLIR) approaches are comparatively evaluated for Turkish and English texts. As a complementary study, knowledge-based methods for word sense disambiguation (WSD), which is one of the most important parts of the CLIR studies, are compared for Turkish words. Query translation and sense indexing based CLIR approaches are used in this study. In query translation approach, we use automatic and manual word sense disambiguation methods and Google translation service during translation of queries. In sense indexing based approach, documents are indexed according to meanings of words instead of words themselves. Retrieval of documents is performed according to meanings of the query words as well. During the identification of intended meaning of query terms, manual and automatic word sense disambiguation methods are used and compared to each other. Knowledge based WSD methods that use different gloss enrichment techniques are compared for Turkish words. Turkish WordNet is used as a primary knowledge base and English WordNet and Turkish Wikipedia are employed as enrichment resources. Meanings of words are more clearly identified by using semantic relations defined in WordNets and Turkish Wikipedia. Also, during calculation of semantic relatedness of senses, cosine similarity metric is used as an alternative metric to word overlap count. Effects of using cosine similarity metric are observed for each WSD methods that use different knowledge bases.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between teachers&rsquo / sense of efficacy in student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management and perceived openness to change in schools as regards willingness of the teachers to embrace change and teachers&rsquo / perception related to principal&rsquo / s openness to change, and teachers&rsquo / willingness to respond to community pressure for change. The research was designed as a correlational study and participants of the study consisted of 552 teachers working at primary and secondary level public schools selected from the four school districts in Ankara. Cluster sampling approach was used in selecting the overall sample of the study. In order to measure teachers&rsquo / sense of efficacy and their perceived openness to change in schools, Turkish adaptation of Teachers&rsquo / Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) and newly adapted The Faculty Change Orientation Scale (FCOS) were utilized in the research as data gathering instruments, as well as the administration of a demographic survey. For the data analysis, both descriptive and inferential statistics techniques (Canonical Correlation Analysis) were used in the study. Exploratory Factor Analysis was also performed for Faculty Change Orientation Scale and Teachers&rsquo / Sense of Efficacy Scale to ensure construct validity of the instruments. The results of the analyses in the study indicated that there is a low relationship between teachers&rsquo / sense of efficacy in student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management and perceived openness to change in schools as regards teachers&rsquo / willingness for change, teachers&rsquo / perception about principal&rsquo / s openness to change and teachers&rsquo / willingness to respond community pressure for change.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the present state of the sense of teacher efficacy in public kindergarten teachers as it relates to their background and subjective perception variables. The aim of this study was (1) to understand the condition of the sense of teacher efficacy in public kindergarten teachers, (2) to investigate the differences in teachers¡¦ sense of efficacy among public kindergarten teachers with diverse background variables (the teachers¡¦ attribute and schools¡¦ attribute variables), (3) to analyze the relationships between the subjective perception variables (the job characteristics perception and the social evaluation perception variables) and the teachers¡¦ efficacy sense, (4) to explore the predictive power of the diverse background variables and subjective perception variables for the teacher efficacy sense, (5) to compare the attitudes toward children, instruction and work between high and low sense of teacher efficacy, (6) based on the results of this study, the researcher proposed several suggestions for improving the sense of teacher efficacy in kindergarten teachers. This study adopted both questionnaire survey and interview methods. The participant¡¦s questionnaire survey included 354 public kindergarten teachers in Taiwan. The instruments employed were The Scale of Kindergarten Teachers¡¦ Efficacy, The Scale of Job Characteristics Perception, and The Scale of Social Evaluation Perception. The quantitative data obtained were analyzed by Descriptive Statistics, t-test, Hotelling¡¦s T2, One-Way MANOVA, Product-moment Correlation, Canonical Correlation Analysis and Stepwise multiple regression analysis. The participants in the interview for understanding the different attitudes toward children, instruction and work between high and low sense of teacher efficacy were 10 high and low efficacy sense teachers. Major findings of this study are summarized as follows: 1. The public kindergarten teachers possessed higher teachers¡¦ efficacy sense. 2. There were significant differences in the teachers¡¦ efficacy sense of the public kindergarten teachers with the diverse teachers¡¦ attribute variables. 3. There were relationships between the subjective perception variables (the job characteristics perception and the social evaluation perception variables) and the teachers¡¦ efficacy sense. 4. There were significant differences in the teachers¡¦ efficacy sense of the public kindergarten teachers with the diverse job characteristics perception and the social evaluation perception variables. 5. Number of working years, diploma and class grade background variables, skill variety, task importance, task autonomy, task feedback of the job characteristic perception variables, and the social evaluation perception variables could predict the sense of teacher efficacy of the kindergarten teachers. 6. There were differences in opinions and attitudes toward children, instruction and work between high and low sense of teacher efficacy. Finally, according to the results and conclusions of this study, the researcher proposed several suggestions to the kindergarten teachers, the kindergartens, the teacher education institutes, the educational administration institutions, and for future study.

The first topic of this thesis is to propose a novel voltage-to-frequency converter (VFC) to provide high sensitivity. The VFC circuit is composed of one current mirror, one current multiplier, and voltage window comparators. The proposed VFC tracks the variations of the stored charge of a built-in capacitor. The voltage window comparator monitors the voltage of the capacitor to determine whether the output is pulled high or pulled down. The worth-case linear range of the output frequency of the proposed VFC is 0 to 55 MHz provided that the input voltage is 0 to 0.9 V. The error is less than 9% while the power dissipation is 0.218 mW. The second topic is to carry out a novel CMOS current-mode high- speed sense amplifier (SA). The proposed SA is composed by cascading a current-mode sense amplifier and a voltage-mode sense amplifier. The small input impedance of the current-mode amplifier alleviates the loading effect on the bitlines of SRAM cells such that the sensing speed is enhanced. The voltage-mode amplifier is responsible for boosting the logic levels to full swing. The worst access time of the proposed design is found to be less than 1.26 ns with a 1 pF load on outputs. The power dissipation is merely 0.835 mW at 793 MHz.