Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Special Education, Counseling, and Student Affairs / Kenneth Hughey / The characteristics and needs of college students across the United States are ever-changing. As Millennial generation students, born between 1982 and 2003 (Howe & Strauss, 2000), attend college, unique characteristics are present. Commonalities within the Millennial generation have been identified; however, socioeconomic status can impact a student’s ability to demonstrate these characteristics of the Millennial generation (Ramsey, 2008). Socioeconomic status still remains the greatest predictor of college aspirations but can prohibit some Millennial students from the opportunity to attend college (Greene, Huerta, & Richards, 2007). This qualitative study investigated the lived experiences of low socioeconomic Millennial generation college students. Bourdieu’s (1977; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, 1990) Cultural Capital Theory was used as the framework to address four research questions regarding knowledge of college, academic experiences, types of support, and collegiate involvement. Research questions were developed utilizing a phenomenological methodology consisting of two semi-structured interviews with open-ended interview questions as the primary data source. Through the analysis of the participant interviews, themes of their lived experiences as a low socioeconomic status Millennial generation college student emerged. Participants shared that their families lacked knowledge and information about college although they encouraged and supported them and understood the importance of a college degree. Although the educational experiences of the participants varied, most encountered challenges transitioning from high school to college. The most important educational experience for the participants is obtaining a college degree, greatly impacting their future. Although self-supportive for most of their lives, attending college is possible through the financial support of the 21st Century Scholars Program. This financial support and the support of their collegiate friends going through similar experiences have been important. Involvement in collegiate activities was important for the participants’ future careers, relationships, and learning; however, they sought these opportunities on their own. This research supports and encourages student affairs practitioners to enhance and improve the services and support provided to low socioeconomic status students in the college community. In addition, this study supports the need for more research related to socioeconomic status within higher education as well as reexamining student development theories to take into consideration socioeconomic status.

The incidence of cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) is steadily increasing. Most of the patients have thin CMM with a good prognosis and a 5-year survival of about 90%. The prognosis is highly related to tumour thickness and clinical stage at diagnosis. Effective systemic treatment for patients with metastatic disease has only recently been available. This thesis aims to increase knowledge of trends in tumour thickness, prognostic factors, socioeconomic differences and medical costs in patients with CMM. The population-based Swedish melanoma register is the main source of data in all papers in the thesis. Papers I-III include patients from all of Sweden while paper IV is delimited to the County of Östergötland. Cox regression and logistic regression are the main multivariable methods used. Paper IV is focused on stage-specific costs of CMM by comparing direct healthcare costs to a general population. For men, there has been a shift over time towards thinner tumours at diagnosis accompanied by an improved survival. Women are still diagnosed with considerably thinner tumours and they experience a better survival than men. Tumour ulceration, tumour thickness and Clark’s level of invasion all showed significant independent long-term prognostic information in T1 CMMs. By combining these factors, three distinct prognostic subgroups were identified. Lower level of education was associated with reduced CMM-specific survival, which may at least partially be attributed to a more advanced stage at diagnosis. The direct healthcare costs for CMM patients were significantly higher than for the general population, independent of clinical stage. CMM patients diagnosed in clinical stage III-IV were associated with particularly high costs. Even though the survival among Swedish patients with CMM is among the highest in the world and still seems to improve, the results of this thesis emphasise the need of improved early detection strategies. This may be of particular concern in men, older women, and groups with a low level of education. The results also imply that the costs for the management of CMM patients may be reduced if early detection efforts are successful and lead to a more favourable stage distribution. The finding of a better risk stratification of thin CMMs may help to improve the management of this large patient group.

Essay 1: Individuals with higher socioeconomic status (SES) also tend to enjoy better health. Evidence from the economics literature suggests that a potential mechanism behind this “social health gradient” is that human capabilities, that form SES, also facilitate health-promoting behaviors. This essay empirically investigates the significance of socioeconomic differences in health behaviors, using dental care consumption as an operationalization of health investments. I focus on adults at an age where lifetime trajectories for SES can be taken as given and use lifetime income to capture SES. I estimate the impact of lifetime income on dental care consumption and find robust evidence that the social gradient in dental care consumption steepens dramatically over the life-cycle. Considering that dental care consumption only reflects a small part of individuals' health investments the results suggest that lifetime effects of SES on health behaviors could be substantial in other dimensions. Essay 2: This essay studies the effect of competition on prices on a health care market where prices are market determined, namely the Swedish market for dental care. The empirical strategy exploits that the effect of competition differs across services, depending on the characteristics of the service. Price competition is theoretically more intense for services such as examinations and diagnostics (first-stage services), compared to more complicated and unusual treatments (follow-on services). By exploiting this difference, I identify a relative effect of competition on prices. The results suggest small but statistically significant negative short-term effects on prices for first-stage services relative to follow-on services. The results provide evidence that price-setting among dental care clinics responds to changes in the market environment and substantial effects of competition on prices over time cannot be ruled out. Essay 3: The Swedish dental care insurance subsidizes dental care costs above a threshold and becomes more generous as dental care consumption increases. On average, higher-income individuals consume more dental care and have better oral health than low-income individuals. Therefore, the redistributional effects of the Swedish dental care insurance are ambiguous a priori. I find that the dental care insurance adds to the progressive redistribution taking place through other parts of the Swedish social insurance (SI) for individuals aged 35-59 years whereas it reduces the progressivity in the SI for those aged 60-89 years. While the result for the oldest individuals is problematic from an equity point of view, the insurance seems to strengthen the progressitivy of the Swedish social insurance for the vast majority of patients.

The objectives of this study are to provide a comprehensive assessment of inequalities in infant and under-five years' child survival, access to and utilisations of child health services among different socio-economic groups in Ethiopia; and identify issues for policies and programmes at national and sub-national levels. This thesis examines the effect of parental socioeconomic status, maternal and delivery care services, mothers' bio-demographic and background characteristics on the level of differences in infant and under-five years' child survival and access to and utilisation of child health services. Descriptive and multivariate analyses were carried out for selected variables in the literature which were consider as the major determinants of infant mortality rate (IMR) and under-five years' child mortality rate (U5MR); access to and utilisations of child health services based on data from Ethiopian demographic and health survey (EDHS), covering the years 2000-2005. In the multivariate analysis a logit regression model was used to estimates inequalities in infant and under-five years' child survival, and inequalities in access to and utilisation of child health services. In Ethiopia, little was known about inequalities in IMR and U5MR, and inequalities in access to and utilisation of child health services. Besides, there is no systematic analysis of health inequalities and into its determinants using logistic regression. According to the available literature, this is the first comprehensive and systematic analysis of inequality of health in Ethiopia. The findings show that compared to under-five years' children of mothers' partners with no work, mothers' partners in professional, technical and managerial occupations had 13 times more chance of under-five years child survival for 2000 weighted observations. In addition, compared to infants of mothers who were gave birth to one child in last 5 years preceding the survey, infants of mothers who were gave birth to 2 children in last 5 years preceding the survey had 70% less chance of infant survival while infants of mothers who were gave birth to 3 or more children had 89% less chance of infant survival for 2000 weighted observations. Moreover, this study finding also indicates that inequalities increased significantly in the five years period between 2000 and 2005 among mothers with different birth interval. Most of the relations between birth interval and receiving childhood immunisation for vaccine-preventable diseases were statistically significant. Moreover compared to non-educated mothers, mothers who completed secondary and higher education were nearly 10 times more likely to receive DPT3 immunisation for their young children. This study concludes that policy measures that tackle health inequalities will have a positive impact in the implementation of health sector strategy of Ethiopia. Health inequalities studies in Ethiopia and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries should focus on systematic analysis of different socio-economic groups. The finding of this study support investing in the Ethiopia's health extension package (HEP) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for addressing rural poor health problem. HEP is successful in increasing primary health care coverage in rural Ethiopia to 89.6% (FMOH, 2009) but unable to reduce Ethiopia's higher level of IMR and U5MR. HEP is one of the success stories that address the rural poor health problem and can also be adapted to developing countries of SSA. The finding also shows that the success stories such as health insurance programs like Rwanda (World Bank, 2008a) and Ethiopia (FMOH, 2009/10) will play a key role in achieving country's health care financing goal of universal coverage. This can also be replicated in the developing SSA countries.

Contributions of home environment and family socioeconomic status (SES) on the intelligence test performance of 24 exceptional children aged five through seven years were investigated. It was hypothesized that higher SES would enrich the children's environment providing a more stimulating learning experience, and would reflect a positive correlation with measures of the home environment. Additional hypotheses were that both HOME scores and SES scales would show a positive correlation with intelligence test performance. The positive association found between SES and HOME Inventory scores suggests that families with a higher SES have the ability to direct more resources toward their children. However, according to the present study, this does not affect the intelligence test performance of exceptional children.

The presented diploma thesis summarizes development of well-being and socioeconomic status conceptions by analyzing accesible vocational literature. The theoretical part is mainly focused on well-being and socioeconomic status (SES) in context and on searching for satisfactory explanation of relationship of those two variables. The attention in empirical part is devoted to examination the dependancy relationship between well-being and SES. We use Satisfaction with life scale (Diener et al., 1985) and The Ryff's scales of psychological well-being (Ryff, 1989) for measuring well-being. Socioeconomic status is deduced from income, education and occupational prestige. The existence of the dependancy relationship between income and well-being measured by RPWB was proven in our research sample (includes 213 respondents). The statistically significant differences between well-being (SWLS) were measured within group of people with elementary and high school education; and further within group of people with the lowest and highest income. However the relationship is sophistically structured and variety of dependent conditions is used rather than simple positive correlation. Key words: well-being, socioeconomic status, life satisfaction, happiness, income, education, occupational prestige

Denna uppsats är en kvantitativ studie om 15-åringars tillit till statliga institutioner utifrån social position i samhället. Studien har genomförts genom en surveyundersökning i form av enkäter genomförda i klass nio i sex kommunala grundskolor i Stockholmsområdet. Studien syftar till att undersöka om det finns samband mellan social position och tillit där vi använder social position som ett samlingsbegrepp för faktorerna socioekonomisk status, klassbakgrund, invandrarbakgrund och kön. Resultaten visar att det går att se ett samband där ungdomar med en lägre social position hyser lägre tillit än ungdomar med en högre social position. Vi kan endast se kön som en faktor gällande den generella tillitsfrågan samt gällande upplevelsen av trygghet kvälls-/nattetid i närområdet. Där personer som definierar sig som kvinnor skattar lägre tillit och känner sig mindre trygga i mörkret än män. Analysen visar att det finns samband mellan tillitsgrad och bostadssegregation, förändringar i välfärdsstaten Sverige, föräldrarnas utbildningsbakgrund samt i vilken mån ungdomarna av sina föräldrar blivit rådda att inte lita på personer i allmänhet. Våra resultat har vi kommit fram till genom framförallt bivariata analyser i statistikprogrammet IBM SPSS Statistics 22. Resultaten har sedan analyserats med hjälp av teori om tillit, socialt kapital och intersektionalitet. De slutsatser vi kan dra av vår analys stämmer till stor del överens med tidigare forskning på ämnet. / This paper is a quantitative study, which examines 15-year-olds trust towards governmental institutions on the basis of social position in society. The study has been carried out through a survey in class nine in six public schools in the Stockholm region. The study aims to investigate whether there is connection between social position and trust, where we use social position as a generic term for socioeconomic status, class background, immigrant background and gender. The results show that it is possible to see a correlation between lower social position and lower trust and higher social position and higher trust. We can only see gender as a factor according to the general question of trust as well as the question of current experience of safety in the evening/at night in the surrounding area. Where people who define themselves as women perceive less trust and feel less safe in the dark than men. The analysis shows that there is connection between the levels of trust and residential segregation, changes in the welfare state, the parents ' educational background and the extent to which young people been advised by their parents not to trust people in general. The results has been analysed through bivariaty analysis in IBM SPSS Statistics 22. The conclusions we can draw from our analysis is to a large extent consistent with previous research on the topic.

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More than 1.2 million Americans are hospitalized annually with an acute coronary syndrome (ACS); many impaired quality of life after discharge with an ACS. This dissertation focuses on two novel aspects of patient health status (PHS) after ACS: how it can be predicted based on the socioeconomic status (SES) of the patient, and how it evolves over time. We used data from TRACE-CORE, a longitudinal prospective cohort of patients hospitalized with ACS. We measured PHS using both the SF-36 mental and physical component subscales (MCS and PCS) and the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and physical limitations subscales at the index hospitalization and at 1, 3, and 6-months post-discharge. Firstly, after adjusting for individual-level SES, we found that individuals living in the neighborhoods with the lowest neighborhood SES had significantly worse PHS. Secondly, we found that each of the components of PHS had subgroups with distinct patterns of evolution over time (trajectories). Both the PCS and the SAQ physical limitations subscale had two trajectories; one with average and one with impaired health status over time. For the HRQoL subscale of SAQ, we found three trajectories: Low, Average, and High scores. For MCS, we found four trajectories: High (consistently high scores), Low (consistently low scores), and two with average scores at baseline that either improved or worsened over time, referred to as Improving and Worsening, respectively. All PHS trajectories, except for MCS, predicted readmission and mortality during the 6 months to 1 year post-ACS discharge.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-13T14:10:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rafaela Almeida Cordeiro.pdf: 2299174 bytes, checksum: 562a2ecb7d21f38f12cdd150da91fbcf (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-18 / The co-branding strategy consists of an alliance between two brands for the development of a product that is labeled and identified simultaneously by both, in order to reinforce competitiveness and to offer more value for customers through brand associations. This study aims to identify whether consumers evaluate co-branded products differently depending on the brand s knowledge level, and if the evaluation varies among consumers from both higher and lower socioeconomic strata. The product s evaluation process can be understood from the perspective of the anchoring theory, which is the adoption of a framework that guides individual s choice. Previous studies investigated how consumers accumulate knowledge about brands and apply this information to evaluate the co-branded products. Results indicated that in a co-branding alliance a constituent stimulus (brand) should serve as an anchor and can affect the evaluation of the product as a whole. In this study, differently from previous work, the evaluated product (a laptop) is the result of a co-branding strategy with an ingredient brand (Intel) one that acts as a modifier of the host brand and adds value to it. To investigate these questions, three experiments were carried out with 865 undergraduate students from different higher education institutions located in São Paulo. The experimental projects were of within and between-subject designs, and the data collected were analyzed using t-tests for comparison of means and general linear models (GLM). The dependent variable was the product evaluation and the independent variables were brand (low and high brand awareness), co-branding (presence and absence) and socioeconomic strata (lower and higher). The laptops of both well-known brands and less-known brands were better evaluated when the co-branding alliance was present. No evidence was found to support the assumption that the difference in evaluation between products with and without co-branding is higher among respondents from lower socioeconomic stratum, compared to respondents of higher socioeconomic stratum. This study contributes to cover a gap in the literature on anchoring because it addresses non-numerical scenarios and compares the behaviors of consumers from different social classes. It was found that the theory of anchoring seems to be insufficient to explain the difference in the evaluation of a product when the co-branding strategy is adopted. Finally, opportunities for further research on the co-branding topic are proposed. / A estratégia de co-branding consiste na aliança entre duas marcas para desenvolver um produto, que é rotulado e identificado simultaneamente por ambas, com o fim de fortalecer a competitividade e oferecer mais valor aos clientes por meio das associações de marca. Este trabalho tem como objetivo identificar se a avaliação do produto em situação de co-branding é diferente quando a aliança é formada por marcas muito e pouco conhecidas, e se há diferença entre a avaliação de consumidores de estrato socioeconômico superior e inferior. Esse processo de avaliação do produto pode ser entendido sob a ótica da ancoragem, que consiste na adoção de um referencial que direciona a escolha dos indivíduos. Em estudos anteriores, verificou-se que consumidores acumulam conhecimento das marcas e utilizam essas informações na avaliação de produtos co-branded; os resultados indicam que, numa aliança de co-branding, um estímulo constituinte (marca) deve servir como âncora e pode afetar a avaliação do produto como um todo. Nesta dissertação, diferente dos trabalhos que serviram como base teórica, o produto avaliado (notebook) é resultado de uma co-branding com marca ingrediente (Intel) aquela que age como modificadora da marca de acolhimento e adiciona valor a ela. Para investigar tais questões, foram realizados três experimentos com 865 estudantes de graduação de diferentes instituições de ensino superior de São Paulo. Os projetos experimentais foram do tipo between e within-subject, e as análises foram conduzidas por meio de testes t de comparação de médias e de modelos lineares gerais (GLM). A variável dependente foi avaliação do produto e as variáveis independentes foram marca (muito e pouco conhecida), co-branding (presença e ausência) e estrato socioeconômico (superior e inferior). Verificou-se que notebooks, tanto de marcas muito conhecidas quanto de marcas menos conhecidas, são mais bem avaliados quando estão em aliança de co-branding. Não foram encontradas evidências para sustentar a ideia de que a diferença na avaliação obtida entre os produtos com e sem co-branding seja maior entre os respondentes de classe socioeconômica inferior, na comparação com respondentes de classe socioeconômica superior. Este estudo contribui para preencher uma lacuna na literatura em ancoragem, uma vez que aborda cenários não numéricos e compara os comportamentos de consumidores de diferentes classes sociais. Identificou-se que a teoria da ancoragem parece ser insuficiente para explicar as diferenças na avaliação de produtos com e sem co-branding. Por fim, são propostas oportunidades de novas pesquisas sobre o tema co-branding.