Perception of risk was used as an independent variable and behaviour as the dependent variable in the research with the assumption that level of precaution used during sexual practices to safeguard against HIV infection will be positively related to the perception of risk to HIV. The conclusiveness of this approach was dependent on evidence that participants know what risky behaviour can contribute to contracting HIV/AIDS and on their willingness to report their risk perception honestly. A snowball sample consisting of 15 Zimbabwean women living in and around Johannesburg was employed. Research objectives were addressed through semistructured interviews. For all participants, perception of risk was qualified by a number of factors. Common precautionary strategies identified by women were to remain faithful to one partner and being more contemplative when choosing bed partners and using condoms. High risk perception was marked by having had various sexual partners, inconsistently using condoms, fear of sexual violence, mistrust of partners, feeling of fear of vulnerability to HIV whenever they had sex and survival concerns. Migrant women’s adoption of safe sex was limited by their circumstances and strategies of risk management and in particular their biases in assumptions about their partners’ sexual histories. This exposes them to the vulnerabilities of HIV/AIDS. Thematic analysis was used to interpret the data.

Prescribing medicines is the primary intervention that most doctors offer to influence their patients’ health; however concerns have been expressed about the extent to which graduates are prepared by medical schools to assume prescribing responsibility. Both students and clinical teachers have identified a gap between workplace prescribing demands placed on newly qualified doctors and their preparation for this complex activity during undergraduate training. This study explored the exit-level prescribing performance of final-year students in the Graduate Entry Medical Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand compared with students’ perceptions of their prescribing competence. The results indicated a disparity between students’ competence and confidence. Examination marks showed that 83.6% of students were competent to prescribe according to the graduating standards of the University; however, questionnaire data revealed that 66% of students did not feel that their training had enabled them to prescribe rationally. This inconsistency was explored by analysis of the examination papers according to Bloom’s Revised and the SOLO Taxonomies. It was concluded that students score well on questions which test recall and application of knowledge, but some do not manage questions involving evaluation. Since prescribing is a complex skill that requires evaluative competence, this may explain why, despite high examination scores, students remain insecure. Exploration of the structure of knowledge through a Bernsteinian lens revealed that curricular components including problem-based learning and horizontal integration constrain epistemic access to the structure of rational prescribing knowledge for some students. It is recommended that rational prescribing skills should be taught as a synchronous strand within the curriculum, rather than in the current integrated mode. Learning could also be improved by innovative pedagogies associated with active learning and improved feedback.

Thesis advisor: David L. Blustein / This study focused on the assessment of counselor perceptions of prostitution and the examination of how perceptions influence counselors' clinical judgments. The preliminary study involved the development of Counselor Perceptions of Prostitution Scale (CPPS) designed to assess counselors' attitudes towards prostitution. The items developed based on the debate in the literature between those who view prostitution as social oppression and inherently traumatizing, and those who believe that prostitution is a self-determined career path were administered to seventy-two counselors-in-training. The measure demonstrated high internal consistency reliability (α = 0.87), had a significant negative correlation (r = -.68) with the Attitudes towards Prostitution Scale (ATPS) and exploratory factor analysis yielded a unidimensional scale. In the final study, three brief clinical vignettes were used to manipulate the variable of client's engagement in prostitution. Each vignette comprised of a client seeking services for depression while engaging in prostitution, selling marijuana, or working in a department store. One hundred and ninety-eight mental health providers rated their empathy, attribution of responsibility for the cause of and solution to the problem, assessment of client's functioning, and willingness to work with the client in response to the vignette assigned. They also completed CPPS and ATPS. Data was analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA). Overall, results of the MANOVA revealed that empathy was the most significant contributor to the difference between conditions. Contrary to prediction, there was no difference in empathy for the client engaging in prostitution versus the client working overtime at the department store. However, counselors' demonstrated lower levels of empathy for the client selling marijuana. The CCA revealed that in response to the prostitution vignette, counselors who viewed prostitution as inherently traumatizing and also held accurate beliefs about prostitution were likely to be more empathic and attribute less personal responsibility to the client for solving her own problems. Limitations of this study and implications for counselor practice, education, and future research are discussed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology.

[pt] Esta pesquisa procura entender melhor de que forma as operadoras de telefonia móvel podem configurar suas ofertas de pacotes de produtos e serviços, através de um estudo de percepção de valor por parte dos clientes que já utilizam os serviços. Através de questionários estruturados, procurou-se avaliar a questão da percepção de valor dos usuários, examinando a compensação entre o benefício que se recebe e o sacrifício dispendido para obter esses benefícios. Apesar de o preço ser, na maioria das vezes, o lado do sacrifício na relação de valor, os resultados mostram que os usuários estão dispostos a desembolsar uma quantia até 50 por cento maior para adquirir serviços cujas características sejam mais adequados a seus padrões de uso. / [en] The objective of this research is to understand how mbile phone operators can set their service bundling offers. An exploratory study, followed by a survey made through structured questionaries were done in order to evaluate the customers value perceptions. Value perceptions here is defined as the trade-off between the perceived benefits and the perceived sacrifice to obtain a given benefit. Although most of the times price is the sacrifice side on the perceived value relationship, the results show that on average the customers are willing to pay 50 percent more to have benefits that better fit and control their use standards.

Through a singular case study, this research enquiry seeks to explore teacher perceptions about the development of a concept-based curriculum program (called as the Conceptual Curriculum by the school), in the context of an International Baccalaureate (IB) World school in the Middle East, and the intended and unintended outcomes of the initiative. The study employs Bernstein’s (1975) theories of classification and framing, and curriculum recontextualization, as an analytical framework to interpret findings. The study is informed through methods such as reading and analyzing of curriculum documents, conducting semi-structured interviews, and the distribution of a web-based questionnaire to teachers. Findings in this research inquiry revealed that, though teachers expressed the experience of creating and delivering the Conceptual Curriculum as sometimes being challenging and frustrating, a vast majority of the teachers prefer a flexible curriculum framework versus a prescriptive curriculum. However, findings also revealed that, though teachers seem to enjoy the freedom and flexibility of working with broad curricular frameworks as opposed to prescriptive curricula, there seem to be some fundamental questions pertinent to curriculum recontextualization remaining unanswered, for which perhaps teachers seek answers from qualified curriculum development personnel. Findings reveal that when broad curricular frameworks get recontextualized, the lack of consensus amongst teachers on what counts as essential knowledge is often a matter of concern. Findings reveal that in curriculum recontextualization, when having to negotiate between a “multiplicity of pedagogic fields” (Cambridge, 2011, p. 129) teachers seem to be inherently aligning to something that is a “crystal clear benchmark” such as the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IB DP), as opposed to something that is more flexible and open-ended such as the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (IB PYP). The disciplinary focus of the Conceptual Curriculum and the tendency of teachers to align more towards the IB DP rather than the IB PYP (even in lower grades such as 7 and 8) has thus resulted in a quick transition from the “weakly classified” (Bernstein 1971, p.49) inter-disciplinary IB PYP curriculum to a “strongly classified” (Bernstein 1971, p.49) Conceptual Curriculum with disciplinary focus. Findings from this study reveal that teachers see the value and purpose in teaching for conceptual understanding, but this, when coupled with having to choose curriculum content and developing a coherent curriculum has made the experience both challenging and burdensome for them. Findings also reveal that practical agendas of the school, such as addressing limited time and staffing issues assume priority over lofty ideals when the curriculum is recontextualized, thereby indicating that school-based curriculum initiatives lose rigor and form, in the cracks of everyday practice. Findings in this study thus suggest that when teachers are offered the possibility of working with flexible curricular frameworks, realities of everyday practice take over. This often leads to teachers self-prescribing the curriculum, thereby making the process self-mandated, which in effect defeats the very purpose of the school-based curriculum development initiative undertaken.

This mixed method study sought to explore the perceptions of key stakeholders in education, on the role and contribution of ICT in Scottish secondary schools towards generic skills development among pupils for post school transitions. The timing of this study coincided with a period characterised by contextual pressures globally, marked with technology changes, youth unemployment and curriculum reviews. A review of literature was conducted systematically to evaluate the explicit permeation of ICT in Scottish schools. A sequential mixed method design was adopted for the two phased study commencing with a convenience sampling technique for the first phase, involving 1364 upper secondary school pupils from all eight schools, 64 teachers and the 17 employers in one local Council in Scotland. A purposive sampling technique was applied to select two sample schools for the second phase, based on best use and practices of ICT. Questionnaires were administered online and in person at the first phase, followed by a semi structured interview at the second phase. SPSS was used for descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and one way Anova, while Nvivo 10 software was used for thematic analysis from the interview transcript. The study offers a framework for personalisation starting with identification of pupils’ ability and ICT skill level at inception classes, followed by a personalised learning design incorporating pupils’ interest, ability and post school destination. The study also proposes separate roles for teachers and policy makers in order to maintain teachers’ autonomy, as policy makers’ interference has been identified to have an impact on teachers’ professionalism, effectiveness and confidence necessary for imparting generic skills in pupils. A series of recommendations are provided for future research, including a longitudinal evaluation of generic skills acquired from individual school subjects through the upper school years to post school destination, to ascertain effective transfer and sustainability of generic skills.

State-of-the-art models for the perception of grouping structure in music do not attempt to account for disagreements among listeners. But understanding these disagreements, sometimes regarded as noise in psychological studies, may be essential to fully understanding how listeners perceive grouping structure. Over the course of four studies in different disciplines, this thesis develops and presents evidence to support the hypothesis that attention is a key factor in accounting for listeners' perceptions of boundaries and groupings, and hence a key to explaining their disagreements. First, we conduct a case study of the disagreements between two listeners. By studying the justi cations each listener gave for their analyses, we argue that the disagreements arose directly from differences in attention, and indirectly from differences in information, expectation, and ontological commitments made in the opening moments. Second, in a large-scale corpus study, we study the extent to which acoustic novelty can account for the boundary perceptions of listeners. The results indicate that novelty is correlated with boundary salience, but that novelty is a necessary but not su cient condition for being perceived as a boundary. Third, we develop an algorithm that optimally reconstructs a listener's analysis in terms of the patterns of similarity within a piece of music. We demonstrate how the output can identify good justifications for an analysis and account for disagreements between two analyses. Finally, having introduced and developed the hypothesis that disagreements between listeners may be attributable to differences in attention, we test the hypothesis in a sequence of experiments. We find that by manipulating the attention of participants, we are able to influence the groupings and boundaries they find most salient. From the sum of this research, we conclude that a listener's attention is a crucial factor affecting how listeners perceive the grouping structure of music.

Anxiety and depression are among the most common psychiatric disorders in childhood and adolescence (Costello, Egger, & Angold, 2005). Although the parental environment appears to play a role in the development of emotional disorders (e.g., Abramson & Alloy, 2006), cognitive styles within the families of adolescents with internalising disorders have received little attention. The main aim of this thesis was to increase the understanding of maternal cognitions in relation to internalising disorders experienced by adolescents. Specifically, maternal attributional style, catastrophic worries, selective attention and perceptions of adolescents' social competence were examined through a combination of cross-sectional, correlational and experimental designs in the programme of five studies conducted with a clinical sample. Three groups of adolescents and their mothers participated in the studies: adolescents with clinical internalising disorders, adolescents with clinical externalising disorders and a non-referred group of school-children along with their mothers. In support of the hypotheses, mothers of adolescents with clinical internalising disorders had more negative attributional biases than the mothers in the two control groups. When parental attributions were examined from the child's perspective, adolescents in the clinical internalising group perceived that their parents had more negative attributions than both control groups. Examination of maternal evaluations of adolescents' social skills, revealed that even though adolescents did not have social deficits according to objective ratings, mothers of adolescents with internalising disorders underestimated the performance of their children compared to the non-referred control group. Significant relationships were found between maternal and adolescent attributions and perceptions of social competence, suggesting a link between maternal and adolescent cognitive style. Furthermore, mothers of the clinical internalising group produced a greater number of worries which were more catastrophic in content than mothers in the control groups. Contrary to predictions, mothers of adolescents with clinical internalising disorders did not selectively attend to threatening information related to adolescents' behaviours. Analyses using combined data from the four studies that showed significant relationships provided evidence that different cognitions in mothers and their children are interrelated, highlighting the importance of interactions between various cognitions within the family. Additionally, attributional style, catastrophic worries and negative perceptions were found to discriminate families with adolescents with internalising disorders from those with adolescents with externalising disorders or non-referred adolescents. The studies included in this thesis extend the current literature on maternal cognitions and adolescent internalising disorders and suggest that mothers of adolescents with internalising disorders are characterised by cognitive biases that should be taken into consideration in both research and clinical practice.

To deal with the challenge of deprivation and its impact on learning, there is a long history of schools attempting to respond by working beyond the school gates. Despite a wealth of how-to-do-it guides and advocacy texts for this approach, there is little detailed research into how community-oriented schools are understood and enacted by various core educational professionals, particularly those working in primary schools. Given the centrality of educational professionals' practice in this policy arena, this study aimed to respond to such a gap. This study focused on an in-depth analysis and reflection on the ways in which community-oriented schooling was understood by professionals and what has influenced their thinking, as well as their ensuing action in one particular primary school. The overarching research question was: what are professionals' perceptions and practices of a community-oriented approach in the context of a primary school located in a socio-economically disadvantaged community? This required a research design that allowed a sample of eight school staff to be analysed using a case study design. Within this, a suite of research methods was applied, including interviews, observations and analysis of key school documentation to explore multi-level factors that impact on professionals. Finally, a synthesising tool was developed to examine the interrelationships between the factors. The findings state that the way individual professionals respond to the proximal and distal factors is not linear or straightforward to understand. Instead the data suggested a dynamic complexity where a spectrum of factors intersected for individuals in distinct ways. Such findings point to the use of an ecological approach to help explain the various perceptions and practices of community-oriented schooling. This study suggests that policy development and enactment of community-oriented schooling cannot be generalised in any unilateral way but instead needs to be understood within localised settings.

Korruption utmålas av biståndsorgan som ett av de största hoten mot ett lands utveckling. Detär inte endast ett problem i sig självt, utan korruption genererar även andra samhällsproblem.Detta gör att anti-korruptionsarbete är på agendan för många biståndsgivare, då ett lyckatresultat kan leda till förbättringar inom många områden. I teorin låter det som att länder medhög korruption bör få hjälp att stävja denna, men är det så i praktiken? Denna studieundersöker hur mottagarländernas korruptionsnivå påverkar biståndet de mottar, genom enfixed effects-regression av paneldata över 79 länder för åren 2005 till 2016. Resultaten visaringen statistisk signifikant effekt av mottagarländernas korruptionsnivå på dess bistånd.Däremot går det att säkerställa att korruptionsnivån påverkar Sveriges bilaterala bistånd.