This thesis was the result of a study conducted for the call-centre at the Workers' Compensation Board of British Columbia (WCB). The management at WCB wanted to understand the nature and pattern of calls at their newly opened call-centre. The purpose of this was to provide an efficient customer service while streamlining the flow of calls coming to the call-centre. An extensive data collection exercise was undertaken at the call-centre and two other units of WCB with which the call-centre interacts. The data analysis revealed that a high proportion of calls were related to transfers to these departments. There were also calls related to routine inquiries on claim payment cheques and forms that could potentially be handled by a well designed IVR system. Based on this understanding the development of an effective IVR system was proposed to address the problems that were discovered through documenting the nature and pattern of calls. An extensive review of literature was undertaken to design a new system according to the standard industry guidelines suggested by the best practices and customized to WCB's business needs. Two alternate scripts were developed after analysing the source and purpose of calls to WCB. One was 'person specific' and the other was 'task specific'. The two scripts were tested on students at WCB through a computer-based IVR simulation. The results of the student survey provided evidence that introducing additional options and use of simple and clear instructions in the new scripts could potentially in fact address the problems discovered in the study and they were preferred over the existing WCB script. The IVR simulation is reconfigurable and can be used in future studies to gather further evidence in support of the results obtained in this thesis as well as refine scripts before putting them in a production mode. / Business, Sauder School of / Marketing, Division of / Graduate

The Oyster River Research project begins by exploring the meaning of agriculture, the definition, the history, the cultural context of agri-culture, as well as the role of agriculture in our present day. An overview of the Agricultural Census 1992 is given to outline the Agricultural Industry past and present within Canada, and the major issues and constraints with regards to Agriculture in British Columbia are identified. Elements of farmland conservation, BC's ALR, as well as case studies and precedents regarding farmland conservation strategies are also discussed. From this research exploration, an understanding of the role and scope of UBC, the Oyster River Farm, and the surrounding community, locally and regionally is met, and programs capable of linking these issues are developed. These programs, in conjunction with the overall farm and community site design, exhibit the most beneficial means of defining and developing the relationship of UBC, the farm, and the community, while maintaining the integrity of agricultural land and the practice of farming for local food security. Ultimately, this design thesis offers a solution that attempts to serve UBC, the Oyster River Farm and the local / regional community in a manner most sensitive socially, ecologically, and economically to issues presently facing the Research Farm and the larger community of the Comox-Strathcona Regional District. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of / Graduate

This thesis explores the dialectical relationship between aboriginal and anthropological discourses of tradition and cultural performance. Specifically, I examine some ways in which concepts of tradition and culture are invoked in British Columbia's First Nations communities in order to negotiate, validate, and contest contemporary transformations to cultural practice. Two case studies of recent controversies within Kwakwaka'wakw communities are presented, one surrounding the bestowal of the Hamat'sa Dance on the pan-tribal American Indian Dance Theater for use in public presentations, the other involving the performance of the Hamat'sa— customarily a male prerogative— by women. This study addresses both local Kwakwaka'wakw dialogues about history and contemporary values, and the larger public, academic, and political environments in which those dialogues occur. This thesis takes as its broadest context these dialogues and shifts in the scale of identity and representation: between different native communities and different voices within them; between contests for local privilege and global control over "national" heritage; between indigenous peoples and the discipline of anthropology. I argue that tradition is best approached as a critical value emerging from these discourses, a concept which is intentionally used as a marker of present identity through strategic appeal to the past. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

This study investigates the reporting and grading, as well as the meaning of letter grades, of students in Science 9 from the perspectives of teachers, students, and parents in five schools from two British Columbia school districts, one urban and one rural. To that end, four research questions guided the data collection and analyses: (1) What reporting methods do teachers use to communicate information about student learning in Science 9 to students and parents, and what are teachers', students', and parents' opinions of those reporting methods? (2) What grading components do teachers incorporate into Science 9 letter grades, and what grading components do students and parents believe teachers incorporate into Science 9 letter grades? (3) What meanings do teachers, students, and parents attribute to Science 9 letter grades? and (4) What are students' and parents' perceptions about some possible effects of student progress reports in Science 9? A mixed-methodology design was employed to collect the data. Quantitative data, collected via self-administered written questionnaires from the five Science 9 teachers, 43 students, and 21 parents who volunteered to participate in the study, were used to identify participants' practices and perceptions about grading and reporting. Qualitative data, collected via individual, audio-taped interviews conducted with a subset of the people who completed questionnaires (all five teachers, 16 students, and seven parents), were used to verify, clarify, and expand the questionnaire data. Observational notes and collected documents (e.g., report card forms) also served as data sources. The results of this study show that most of the participants in the study were generally satisfied with most aspects of the reporting of student progress in Science 9. However, individual teachers consider different kinds of assessment information when they assign Science 9 letter grades, teachers are not always clear and consistent about what they intend letter grades to mean, and students' and parents' beliefs about the grading components and meanings of Science 9 letter grades vary widely. The results pf this study also indicate that the information communicated by a letter grade is not always clear and consistent. That the meaning of a letter grade is not always clear has implications for the ways in which letter grades are used by students and parents. The results of this study indicate that some students' attitudes, behaviours, and decisions could be affected by the grades they receive in Science 9. However, in order for students' attitudes, behaviours, and decisions to be appropriate, their interpretations of the meanings of letter grades must be appropriate. Given the multiple meanings attributed to a Science 9 letter grade, it is likely that peoples' inferences and actions based on a letter grade will not always be appropriate. This study raises a number of issues. Two classes of issues are discussed: those arising from the research findings, and those arising from the methodology of the study. An example of an issue arising from the research findings is that the process of assigning letter grades is problematic. An example of an issue arising from the methodology is that participants do not always interpret questionnaire items in the way they are intended. This study contributes to our understanding of teachers' grading practices with respect to the assignment of Science 9 letter grades, and it provides information about students' and parents' understandings of those grading practices. The study also provides insight into teachers', students', and parents' understandings of the meaning of letter grades. In addition, the results of this study help us understand some possible consequences of reports of student progress from the perspectives of students and parents. Another contribution is a direct result of the methodology of the study — by interviewing a subset of the questionnaire respondents after they had completed the questionnaires, it was possible to learn more about how different people interpreted the questionnaire items; that is, it was possible to explore the internal validity of the study. As a result, this study offers evidence about the value of employing more than one data collection method when conducting research. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Increasing demands for the natural resources of British Columbia coastal forests have led to conflicts between resource users. In addition recent demand for intangible "non-economic" resources, such as outdoor recreation is creating added pressure upon the wildland resource base. The British Columbia Forest Service, although restricted to some extent by a narrowly-worded "wood production" statute, has attempted to resolve forest resource conflicts by administrative action such as the development of new contract provisions and logging guidelines. These alternatives can be effectively enforced against Crown licensees due to Crown control of most timber resources, but they are largely ineffective for the regulation of private timberland operations. Although private lands are not extensive, their harvest is substantial and they comprise a significant acreage in the rich coastal forest areas. The common law offers several potential causes of action which might be employed by the Forest Service to regulate logging operations on private timberlands, particularly with respect to impact upon fishery resources in coastal forest streams. The Forest Act could also be interpreted to authorize regulation of private logging operations. Litigation, whether civil or criminal, however, is not an optimum method of environmental management. It is expensive, time-consuming, extremely technical and remedies are generally post facto in character. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

This study examines the leading businessmen in Vancouver, British Columbia, from 1886 to 1914. Its purpose is to define the economic and social character of the top portion of the business community in early Vancouver, and to explore the process by .which this community was formed. The identities of businessmen associated with 'important' businesses operating in the city were determined at two different four-year points, from 1890 to 1893 and 1910 to 1913 to allow for an analysis of changes within the leadership group. A comprehensive examination of all businesses in Vancouver during the two periods in question was first undertaken before the 'relatively large' or 'important' businesses in Vancouver, and the businessmen associated with them, were identified. To facilitate a more Intensive analysis of the 66 and 276 'business leaders' chosen during the two periods, businessmen who had headed the few largest companies in the city were categorized into another, more select group called the 'business elite'. An additional sub-group of business leaders who had lived in Vancouver from 1910 to 1914 and had achieved a position of high social status in the city was defined as the 'social upper class'. The development of Vancouver's business community was closely linked to the changing character of the two principal economic systems which operated in coastal British Columbia between 1886 and 1914. While the C.P.R. was initially responsible for the emergence of Vancouver as a city in the 1880's, and while the C.P.R. was by far the most powerful business institution in the Terminal City during the decade after 1886, early Vancouver business leaders retained many ties with the maritime economic system, centered in Victoria, which remained predominant in coastal British Columbia into the late 1890's. Vancouver became a regional metropolitan centre, and its wholesalers and lumbermen finally emerged as the two most influential business groups in the city, only when the coastal region of the province became fully integrated, a decade after the arrival of the G.P.R., into a transcontinental system centered in eastern Canada. The continentalization of the provincial economy was matched by the Canadianization of Vancouver's business leadership at the turn of the century. Vancouver's leading businessmen were a distinctly regional business group. They had few ties with the business establishment of eastern Canada, either on the boards of national corporations or in the business and social clubs of the eastern elite. Most city ^enterprises operated within British Columbia alone, though lumber companies and several wholesale firms marketed products on the prairies. This regionalism found expression in particular in the structure of business in Vancouver, and in the types of economic activity that preoccupied city businessmen. Vancouver-centered businesses were small by national standards, and exhibited a simple form of internal organization based on the dominant proprietorship of one man, group of partners or family; this was the case despite the fact that most 'important' local businesses had been incorporated into limited liability companies by 1914. The individual entrepreneur owning his own company, rather than the finance capitalist or career bureaucrat, was still the most prominent type of business leader in Vancouver before the War. Particularly indicative of the regional character of business activity in Vancouver was the preoccupation of these entrepreneurs with speculation in, or the development of urban land and hinterland resources. National business trends had begun to influence the structure of business and the nature of business leadership in Vancouver by 1914, however. The consolidation of many small into a few large companies and the consequent internal bureaucratization of businesses was taking place in the resource industries of the province before the War; local companies were giving way to the branch offices of eastern-centered national corporations; and local representatives of national companies with major operations in Vancouver did tend to exert more influence in the city than did the average head of a local company. The social characteristics of Vancouver's top businessmen were less distinctive than their occupational concerns. More British than the city as a whole in the 1890's Vancouver's business leaders had by 1914 become more Canadian; in both periods the business community was solidly Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Business leaders' backgrounds conformed generally to a pattern now familiar in the historical literature on business elites at the turn of the century in both the United States and Canada. Leading businessmen in Vancouver, like business elites elsewhere, were a privileged group, coming from backgrounds of much greater economic and social advantage than the population as a whole. While economic mobility was slightly higher among the top businessmen in Vancouver before 1914 than among the elites at the national level, the career patterns of Vancouver business leaders was not characterized by dramatic 'rags-to-riches' mobility. In addition, status mobility did not conform exactly to economic mobility in Vancouver. While becoming a member of the city's economic elite did ease the way to inclusion into Vancouver's emerging 'social upper class' before 1914, the business leaders who were accepted into the inner circles of Vancouver 'society' were even more likely than successful businessmen to have come from privileged economic and social backgrounds. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

The provision of health care and preventive services that has evolved in Canada was based on the concept of equality. Within any one province all but a few selected groups pay equal prepaid insurance premiums or tax and are given the same benefit; payment of the provider for services rendered. The concept of Distributive Justice suggests that those with special needs should receive special services but selective provision of care or services may give rise to feelings of Relative Deprivation in non-recipients. For a health service to be equitable and perceived as "fair" there must be maximal distributive justice and minimal relative deprivation. During a research project in the Kitimat-Stikine Regional District during the summer of 19 75, it was found that northern British Columbians viewed their health services as unfair. They believed they subsidized the care and services used by southern British Columbia residents. This study investigates the factors in the health service system which affect the utilization and provision of health services and compares the utilization of hospital services of the Kitimat-Stikine Regional District with three other regional districts; Cowichan Valley, North Okanagan and East Kootenay and with British Columbia as a whole province. The comparative regional districts were chosen on the basis of demography, lifestyle, industrial, ethnic and geographic similarities and differences. Statistical tools used were Frequency Distribution, Simple and Multiple Regression. Determinants of access to care are discussed; the perception of illness, convenience costs, financial costs, availability of manpower, programmes and facilities, social and geographic isolation. An examination is made of the distribution of power in the health system and the use that is made of it by political decision makers, government administrators and planners, professional organizations, educators and pressure groups. The health services in the Kitimat-Stikine Regional District are described with emphasis given to missing programmes. The regional district has a high facilities-population ratio and a low manpower-population ratio. The expectations of the residents of northern British Columbia for provision of health care are presented, noting a concentration of expectation on access to acute health care. The planner's expectations, arising from elements in the health system are delineated. Manpower, facility and hospital utilization data were obtained for the four regional districts and the province. The hospital utilization data, separations by disease of residents from hospitals within and without their domiciliary regional district are subjected to statistical testing to determine whether access to care is reduced in the remote regional districts. The data are adjusted for the age and sex composition of the populations of each region-.and the province. There is no indication from the examination of hospital utilization data that the barriers to access to care that exist are effective in reducing the access gained. In each of the four regional districts, the numbers of separations are higher than expected based on the age and sex composition of the populations. A breakdown of the data on the 186 diseases into disease grouping indicates that hospital utilization is significantly high in some regions for particular groups of diseases. The results indicate a need to examine lifestyle and environmental factors in the four regional districts that may be influencing hospital use for these diseases. There are implications for policy formulation and for health planning activities. There is a need for regional districts to broaden their area of concern to include health services other than hospitals, to control environmental health hazards of industries, agencies and homes within their boundaries and to educate the residents about their personal responsibility for their health status, the special needs of some groups of people, the services required to meet those needs and why some services cannot be offered locally but require referral outside the regional district. The health system which has developed, based on the concept of equality does not provide northerners with a perception of equity or fairness. There is a need to obtain innovative services to meet special needs and to ensure the people excluded from the extra benefit are aware of the special needs of those for whom it is provided. Services which provide a high degree of distributive justice and minimize relative deprivation would result in an equitable and unequal service that could be perceived as fair by all. / Medicine, Faculty of / Population and Public Health (SPPH), School of / Graduate

Pre-paid medical and hospital insurance in Canada has enabled many people to obtain medical services that they could not previously afford, but equal access to health care is not yet ensured for all segments of the population. . It has been suggested that health care resources, particularly manpower, tend to concentrate in urban centres, while rural and remote areas have inadequate resources. In testing the relationship between rurality and accessibility to primary health care, this thesis aims at enriching the knowledge base for mitigation decisions. Seven groups of primary health care personnel were examined: general practitioners, pharmacists, dentists, general surgeons, pediatricians, obstetricians and psychiatrists Nine study regions were ranked by rurality and accessibility. Rurality was measured by (1) proportion of rural population residing in the study region, and (2) distance of the study region to the nearest metropolitan centre. Accessibility was measured by (1) travel distance to the nearest health care personnel, and (2) the ratio of health care personnel to the regional population. Rurality was then correlated with accessibility. Rurality was also correlated with waiting time for an appointment with a general practitioner, and statistical tests for significant difference were performed to determine if waiting time varies with community size. The relationship between practice locations of general practitioners and their personal attributes was tested (1) by correlating rurality with place and year of graduation, and (2) by testing for significant difference in place and mean year of graduation among different community size groups. Significant difference tests were also performed to test the effect of the federal policy restricting physician immigration on the proportion of foreign physicians in rural areas. The result of the accessibility test supports the hypothesis that accessibility diminishes with rurality. It also suggests that serious maldistributions occur in primary care sub-specialty personnel, namely pediatricians, obstetricians and psychiatrists, and that there are intra-regional disparities as well as inter-regional disparities. General practitioners are the least inequitably distributed. The findings reveal that population dispersion and small settlements are the primary obstacles to achieving equal access. Results of the waiting time tests were inconclusive. There is no evidence to support a linear relationship between waiting time and rurality. Long waiting times appear to associate with both the most rural and the least rural regions. Statistical tests of waiting time by community size indicate high variability, prohibiting meaningful comparison of the means. The tests of personal attributes of general practitioners indicate that age (year of graduation) decreases with rurality, and increases with community size, and that the proportion of non-B.C. graduates increases with rurality, but is not affected by community size. Federal immigration restrictions have diminished the proportion of foreign physicians in rural communities, but not in urban or metropolitan centres. The concluding discussion of policy implications covers: (1) Manpower Planning with special emphasis on the roles of the government, the Colleges and the University, and the potentials of various policy options, and (2) Regionalization and its application in health manpower planning. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Local area planning is an approach to city planning which has developed in Vancouver over the past five years, and a major unit in the administrative structure of the Vancouver City Planning Department. This thesis is concerned with the purposes of this approach as they have evolved, particularly with the interplay between the purposes actually served and the structure of the civic bureaucracy, and with the choices made by planners among conflicting demands. The methodology used has two elements, an historical analysis based chiefly on contemporary documents, and a sociological analysis of the role relationships of planners working in Area Planning based on interview data. The conclusions suggest that the original purposes for doing Area Planning are no longer being served by the existing organizational structure, and that there is an opportunity and a need for restructuring of the organization and restatement of the purposes if the objectives of Area Planning are to be attained. The Area Planning Division of the City Planning Department was established in 1974, in response to the public demand for participation in the planning process among other reasons. It has grown rapidly, to become the largest division in the Planning Department. A 1973 report suggested three basic reasons for introducing this new approach to planning in Vancouver. Planning is more effective if a strong centralized planning effort is coordinated with neighbourhood oriented planning at the local level. Local area planning brings the planning process closer to the people. Local area planning promotes planning with citizens on a cooperative basis, rather than confrontation responses to plans and proposals. The planner is seen as the central figure in the process. In addition to responding to policy directives and the informal support and guidance of others in the same situation, the position taken by a planner is shaped by compromises among the conflicting expectations and demands placed on the person in this position by those in a variety of related roles. Guidance, or the lack of it, through policy directives is researched through study of documents. The literature is also the basis for specifying three different models of the structure of the work situation in which the local area planner is the central element. These models identify by organizational position and interest the significant others in the planner's environment, but they do not indicate how the planner chooses among the inconsistent expectations and demands made by those involved in these role relationships. To develop the models further interviews were conducted with all of the planners in the Area Planning Division, their superiors to whom they are administratively responsible, representatives of other civic departments who are in frequent contact with Area Planning, some aldermen, and some citizens active in local area planning programmes in their own neighbourhoods. It is clear from the data that the rapid expansion of the Area Planning Division has not corresponded to a parallel expansion of area planning services. The major factor contributing to an increase in staff size is administration of two federal programs, NIP (Neighbourhood Improvement Program) and RRAP (Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program). RRAP is clearly an implementation program rather than planning, and NIP differs in significant ways from the local area planning ideal. The second major factor in the growth of the Area Planning Division is the development of an "in-house" group of planners working within City Hall using a planning approach which has little in common with the Area Planning concept. The growth of the division and diffusion of its activities seem to have negated the spirit which characterized the intent and early implementation of Area Planning. In addition to the loss of its initial motivation, Area Planning is now at a critical point in time because of the cancellation of future NIP programs and changes in the RRAP approach by the federal government. A restructuring or replacement of the Area Planning Division will be required to establish again a local planning approach as a part of more effective and democratic governance of the city. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

With the onset of the depression in 1929 the Province of British Columbia found itself almost immediately in economic difficulties. As a province dependent to a very great extent on exports of raw and semi-processed products it faced by the winter of 1930 mounting unemployment, with which it was ill-prepared to cope, and declining revenues. The efforts of the Conservative government in power to meet the situation by attempting to implement the policy of a balanced budget were unsuccessful and by 1932 the province was facing a severe financial crisis. In the ensuing failure of morale the Conservatives allowed representatives of the business community, chiefly concentrated in Vancouver, to inspect the activities of all government departments and make recommendations which would help to improve the condition of the provincial treasury. The resultant Kidd Report, as it became known, threw education into high relief and in the subsequent election it became an important issue. The controversy over education brought out a number of issues which had been the cause of debate and dissension since the turn of the century. The question of the best means of financing the schools was the most pressing and.obvious one. Every economic recession in the past had highlighted this problem as schools under such circumstances usually suffered from inadequate local revenues and reduced government grants. In addition the problem was generally exacerbated by an increasing school population. But other questions disturbed educations: what subjects should be taught in schools, what emphasis should be given to traditional academic subjects and what to the more practically oriented ones, what structure of schools was the best, what was the function of public education, and most fundamentally, what was the philosophy of education which should be adopted in the changed and changing world of the twentieth century? Until very recently it has generally been stated by historians and educators writing about education that the changes which were proposed and implemented during the decade of the thirties were the product of a genuinely humanitarian impulse, a desire to make education more democratic and egalitarian, and dedicated to the cultivation of the worth of each individual child. However, the developments in the field of education which occurred under the Liberal administration cast serious doubts on this interpretation. The Liberal victory in the fall of 1933 brought to power in British Columbia a party which under the leadership of T. Dufferin Pattullo was, at least in stated social and economic policy, considerably to the left of the federal Liberal party, but nevertheless strongly committed to the preservation of the capitalist system. Pattullo appointed as Minister of Education G.M. Weir, head of the Department of Education at the University of British Columbia and coauthor of the Putman-Weir Survey, an exhaustive survey of education in the province written in 1925. He was widely known as a progressive educator, one who was in favour of the innovations of the "new education". Such innovations were not new to British Columbia but the reasons for their adoption during the first two decades of the century suggest primarily a desire for the production of a socially and vocationally efficient citizenry, a theme which is also basic to the Putman-Vfeir Survey. Similarly through the years from 1933 to 1940 the sane motivation seems apparent in the words and actions of those educators most responsible for educational change. Both the King Report on School Finance in British Columbia written in 1935 and the extensive curriculum revisions of elementary, junior and senior secondary schools undertaken in 1935, 1936 and 1937 give ample evidence of this. In addition there appears during these years an overriding concern with the preservation of the state. Fearful that the democratic state as they understood it had been placed in jeopardy by an unbridled individualism, educators in British Columbia sought to make the schools primarily the vehicle for what they tented the socializing of the student. In effect this amounted to conditioning him to retain those values which were deemed vital for the state's survival, and to reject those which seemed to act as a barrier to necessary social and economic change. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate