Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1980. / Vita. / Bibliography : leaves 265-269. / by Julianne Marie Malveaux. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 103-108. / by Deborah Sharon Alexander. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Benjamin Franklyn Blakney. / M.C.P.

Thesis. 1979. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 334-339. / by Douglas Johnson. / Ph.D.

Since the 1970s, several researchers have questioned the applicability of theories of career development based on research with White males to women, minority group members, andindividuals from low socioeconomic milieus. This study examined the validity of D.E. Super's theory of career development in an underresearched subject population, African-American male and female university students. A conceptual model of career maturity composed of determinants derived from Super's theory (1953, 1972, 1990) and based on research with Caucasians was hypothesized and examined. The rationale was that finding a good fit of the model that also accounted for a significant proportion of the variance would support the adequacy of Super's theory in explaining the career maturity of African-American students as well.The co-determinants of career maturity in the model were sex, educational level, and socioeconomic status (SES) as exogenous variables, and causality and work salience as endogenous variables. Causality and work salience were depicted as latent variables mediating the effects of the demographic variables on career maturity. The model was tested on a sample of 288 African-American students from freshman to doctoral levels. Additional hypotheses investigated which variables in the model were the best predictors of career maturity, sex differences in commitment to the work-role and in career maturity, and the relationship between SES and career maturity.Structural equation modeling using the EQS software program (Bentler, 1989) indicated that, while a good fit of the hypothesized model was obtained, only 12% of the variance in career maturity was explained by the variables in the model. The results suggested that Super's theory may not be wholly adequate in explaining the career maturity of African-American university students. Only commitment to work and educational level were found to be significant predictors of career maturity. Female students were found to be more committed to the work-role and to be more career mature than male students. In general, African-American students exhibited higher participation, commitment, and value expectations in the role of home and family than for the work-role. No significant relationship between SES strata and career maturity was found. Implications for theory, research, and practice were delineated and variables that may be more salient for African-American students' career maturity were also identified. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

This dissertation examines entrepreneurship as a way to overcome labor market discrimination. Specifically, the three empirical essays of this dissertation introduce and evaluate entrepreneurship as a career choice for the formerly incarcerated population in the United States, by studying the antecedents and economic and social impacts of entrepreneurship for formerly incarcerated individuals. The first essay examines whether entrepreneurship is a response to labor market discrimination for formerly incarcerated individuals and establishes entrepreneurship as a route to achieve economic and social reintegration. I take advantage of a quasi-experimental setting using the staggered implementation of the “Ban-the-Box” policy in the United States to disentangle the underlying mechanism of how labor market discrimination affects formerly incarcerated individuals in their entrepreneurial choices. The findings suggest that formerly incarcerated individuals, especially those who are African American, are pushed into entrepreneurship due to the discrimination they face from employers. Yet, I also find that entrepreneurship is a viable alternative career choice for formerly incarcerated people, yielding higher income and lower recidivism rates. The second essay investigates the long-term impacts of entrepreneurship on subsequent employment outcomes for the formerly incarcerated population. This essay argues that entrepreneurship will benefit formerly incarcerated entrepreneurs in subsequent employment outcomes, because entrepreneurship provides a positive signal of commitment and fit to potential employers. Results suggest that, compared to formerly incarcerated individuals without any entrepreneurial experience, those with entrepreneurial experience have an increased likelihood of securing employment, regardless of actual entrepreneurial success. This is particularly true for formerly incarcerated individuals who are high school dropouts or racial, suggesting that entrepreneurship provides long-term benefits to those who are especially lacking in other positive credentials and, thus, are the most stigmatized by employers. The third essay studies the entrepreneurial barriers that formerly incarcerated individuals face in starting their businesses and the implications of such barriers on entrepreneurial outcomes. I find that formerly incarcerated individuals are far less likely to gain access to capital from financial institutions or the government compared to similar non formerly incarcerated individuals, having to rely on personal savings or capital from family and friends. This barrier to gaining resources from financial institutions is more pronounced for African American or Hispanic formerly incarcerated individuals. Furthermore, I find that such barriers to entrepreneurship negatively impact the ventures that formerly incarcerated individuals found regarding the industry, longevity, size, and legal form. These findings provide implications to understanding how such barriers to entrepreneurship can inhibit the role of entrepreneurship as an alternative pathway for discriminated individuals to achieve upward mobility and integration.

This study was undertaken to determine the effects of each of the production typewriting factors of keystroking, planning, and error correction on proficiency at typing business letters at two levels of instruction, at three levels of difficulty, and under three conditions. The conditions were designed to isolate the effect of each of the three factors on proficiency in typing business letters. A secondary purpose was to estimate the relationship between straight copy and letters, between letter conditions, and between speed and accuracy for straight copy and letters. The study involved 107 beginning typewriting students and 84 advanced typewriting students who were enrolled in six suburban high schools in Virginia. The same straight-copy timed writings and business letters were used in both the beginning and the advanced typewriting classes. The two 3- minute timed writings consisted of paragraph materials that had a stroke intensity of 6.0. The nine business letters also had a stroke intensity of 6.0 and consisted of three 150-word letters at low, medium, and high difficulty levels. The primary data analysis of mean performance scores for speed and accuracy on letters was carried out via repeated measures ANOVAS. The Pearson product-moment correlation was used to compute the relationship between variables. Some of the major findings of the study were as follows: 1. Keystroking accounted for a little less than half of total production time, planning accounted for a third of production time, and error correction accounted for approximately a fifth of production time. 2. Keystroking and error correction were greatest for low difficulty letters; planning was greatest for high difficulty letters. 3. At the advanced instructional level, the percentages of production time used for keystroking and planning increased, while the percentage of production time used for error correction decreased. 4. The correlation between straight copy and letters for speed was moderate to high; the correlation between straight copy and letters for accuracy was low. 5. The correlations between letter conditions were high for speed and moderate for errors. 6. For straight copy, the correlations between speed and accuracy were not significantly different from zero. For letters there was a weak negative relationship between speed and accuracy. / Ed. D.

This study investigates black-white status inequality as an explication of central city residential segregation interregionally in 1960 and 1970. Using the popular index of dissimilarity (delta) to quantify educational, occupational and income inequality, it was found that the South was more unequal than the North, but much less so in 1970. Moreover, the level of Southern inequality was more the product of white advantage and the level of Northern inequality results more from significant black disadvantage than is commonly thought. While inequality in both the North and South varies greatly among cities, the sources of inequality were not stable over time nor across regions, as status dissimilarity was more a high status event in the North and in 1970. Since delta, as a nominal measure, is insensitive to such divergent sources of inequality, it was discounted for comparative research. Gini, an ordinal statistic, was also found inadequate in detecting these changes in what status inequality means. Therefore, a interval/ratio index, tridelta, was constructed for accurate interregional and cross time contrasts of status inequality. Furthermore, it was shown that delta measures racial differences as inequality, gini detects degrees of absolute deprivation and tridelta is a quantification of relative deprivation. Using status to explain residential segregation since 1940, showed that status is a weak, but increasingly important, determinant of the nation's cities' levels of segregation. Surprisingly, the North showed less status influence on segregation and closer congruence to 1940 and 1950 levels of segregation than did the South in 1960 and 1970, despite index employed. Occupational dissimilarity, not deprivation, was important in explaining segregation. In contrast, educational and to a lesser extent, income deprivation (relative in the South and absolute in the North) was important, although in the North, education's effect was unexplainedly inverse. Since the South was found to have a more egalitarian housing market, it was suggested that perhaps black status gains have been more visible in the South and that "the American dilemma" may be more salient there. Whatever, the South approaches parity with the North.

Employers' racism and preferences regarding Blacks in relation to: cultural appearance, womens' physical attractiveness, and darkness of complexion.