Employer attractiveness is defined as the envisioned benefits that a potential employee sees in working for a specific organisation (Berthon, Ewing and Hah, 2005). Attracting employees with superior skills and knowledge comprises an important source of competitive advantage. Added to this, young workers are now looking to work for organisations that do not harm the environment. This study attempted to validate an existing scale, the Employer Attractiveness Scale (EmpAt), and extend this scale to include a new self-developed ‘green’ value subscale to measure the importance that a sample of second-to-last and final year university students (N = 276) placed on various values, when choosing an organisation for which to work. The environmental consciousness of the sample of students was thus investigated. The likelihood of finding a job in the ideal organisation was also investigated. The results indicated that the current sample was indeed environmentally conscious on two different ecological scales, including the self-developed green subscale of the new revised EmpAt, and that the likelihood of finding a job in an ideal organisation was indeed considered likely in the current South African context. Significant differences were found between race and gender groups. The Employer Attractiveness scale retained most of its original factorial structure providing validity to the scale, with the green subscale loading as the main factor.

The second chapter examines the impact of information about school quality on student enrollment. I use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effects of a school choice program in California that provides families with signals of low school quality. I find that signals of low quality decrease school enrollment by 14.3% relative to enrollment in the previous year and 23.6% over two years. Despite the large changes in enrollment, student demographics are not affected. Additionally, the effects of school-quality signals are largest when families have alternative school choices that are nearby. I also find some evidence that student achievement in elementary schools declines, although I cannot separately identify the degree to which this is caused by changes in student composition. The third chapter examines the effect of textbook funding on student performance. Evidence on the effects of school resources on student achievement is mixed, but quasi-experimental methods suggest that interventions like class size reductions improve student achievement. This is the first study to consider the effect of textbook funding on student achievement by using a quasi-experimental setting in the U.S. I focus on a large class action lawsuit in California that provided a one-time payment of $96.90 per student for textbooks if schools fell below a threshold of academic performance in the previous year. Exploiting this variation with a regression discontinuity design, I find that textbook funding has significant positive effects on student achievement. The low cost of textbooks relative to class size reduction implies that these effects have a very high benefit-per-dollar.

This quantitative study used a cross-sectional descriptive survey to determine school leavers' perceptions of nursing as a career of choice and how those perceptions influence them in choosing or not choosing nursing as a career. A sample size of Grade 12 school leavers was (n=328). Respondents were invited to participate voluntarily In the study and were selected from 11 public schools from five regions in the Johannesburg district stratified random sampling was employed to select the participating public schools In order to determine the number of respondents per region while the school regions were used as strata. Simple random sampling was used to select participating schools with school names from the sampling frame printed on paper, separated and placed in each bowl representing each of the five regions. Schools were selected randomly from each bowl until the desired sample size was reached. Data was collected by using a 21-itern self-administered questionnaire with closed- and open-ended questions to elicit and describe the school leavers' perceptions of nursing as a career of choice and how those perceptions influence them in choosing or not choosing nursing as a career. Data was analysed through SPSS (Statistical Package for The Social Sciences) Version 13. Results of the study revealed that the perceptions held by school leavers are that nursing as a career of choice is amongst the least popular, less interesting and poorly appealing. This supports the hypothesis that nursing is rated poorly when compared to other career choices of school leavers. Interest in nursing as a career of choice could only be stimulated if the school leavers are given clear, accurate and continuous information on nursing to create awareness about nursing as a career of choice.

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

The aim of this thesis is to identify the brand choice moderators that influence consumers' choice of one brand over another. This research examines the influence of five consumption values on brand choice behaviour within the New Zealand market for new road motorcycles using stepwise discriminant analysis. The greater variety of brands, forcing consumers to make more brand choices combined with the large financial value of some brands was the major motivator for this research. In reviewing the literature a gap emerged relating to brand choice behaviour for durable goods. This research addresses this gap through using the durable goods category of road motorcycles. Findings from this research concluded that consumption values do influence brand choice behaviour within the New Zealand market for new road motorcycles.

There have been substantial changes in the way that families interact with schooling at the point of school choice. These shifts have been brought about by market orientated educational policy changes, and by altered forms and experiences of ‘family’. This study explores this changed dynamic by researching how a group of mothers in one urban setting engaged in school choice over a period of fourteen months. The research set out to investigate the processes, behaviours and influences that mothers took to the task of choosing secondary schooling for their children. In particular it aimed to explore the personal, familial, cultural and social dimensions of this engagement. These objectives were pursued using feminist and phenomenological frames because these theoretical approaches allowed for a gendered and contextualised analysis of experience. Data was gathered longitudinally through return interviews with 20 women from one socially and culturally diverse local government area in Sydney, Australia. The analysis of data is informed by perspectives on markets and consumerism from the field of cultural studies. Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘capital’, ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ were also used along with the feminist concepts of ‘emotional labour’ and ‘emotional capital’ to analyse the way that neoliberal market orientated educational policies impacted on this group of middle Australians. This research shows that the Australian experience of school choice is an emotionally rich, highly context-specific, complex, gendered and cooperative process that contests the prevailing public rhetoric about the operations of markets and of choice. School choice, while not always welcomed by this group of middle Australians, is an overtly gendered activity mostly overseen and undertaken by mothers in gender-specific ways. For these women school choice was an activity that demanded considerable physical and emotional labouring adding significantly to mothers’ work in support of their children’s education. Further, the research showed how within this new marketised context, the family became the site for the contestation of taste via the negotiation of differing economic, social, cultural and emotional capitals vis a vis the structural imperatives imposed by the market. It showed that for these women and their families in this location, at this time, the promise of ‘choice’ was a hollow promise indeed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI. Also available in an electronic version.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Purdue University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 186-196). Also available online.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005.

Thesis (M. P. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.