Proefschrift--Leyden. / "Samenvatting": p.[164]-169. Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: Frederic Thrasher's early work with youth gangs in Chicago continues to influence contemporary gang research. Thrasher's basic premise, that conflict with outside groups facilitates strong interpersonal ties between adolescents, has yet to undergo quantitative analysis. Using data from Wave II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health ("Add Health"), this conflict is measured by the aggregate number of juvenile arrests for property and violent crimes in a community. Multivariate regression is conducted to explore the impact of police threat on number of friendship nominations, while logistic regression is conducted to see if police threat is impacting relationship strength between respondent's first male and female friend. The results from both the multivariate and logistic regressions do not support Thrasher's hypothesis. Implications for future research are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Criminology and Criminal Justice 2011

Coherence and incoherence in conversation refer to the relationship between adjacent parts of the conversation (e.g., between one statement and the next, or between one topic and the next). A clear, relevant connection is called coherent; the absence of an obvious connection is incoherent. Coherence and incoherence are therefore central to any analysis of discourse, but, despite many existing theories of coherence and incoherence, there is little empirical knowledge of these phenomena. This dissertation continues the study of coherence began in my master's thesis. In it I propose three axioms to describe the structure of coherence throughout conversations: I. Both coherence and incoherence are necessary for conversation to occur. II. Conversations optimize coherence both globally and locally. III. Coherence is optimized at several different, hierarchical levels of conversation. Because there is already evidence that coherence is maximized at a global level (Black, 1986/1988), I chose to test whether coherence is optimized at a local level. Specifically, local optimization of sequential coherence relations would consist of a series of alternations between coherence and incoherence. I also sought to test this hypothesis at several different levels of conversation (statement, topic, and macrotopic). In order to test the hypothesis, it was necessary to develop a method for segmenting conversations into statements, topics, and macrotopics and a method for measuring the degree of coherence between these segments. Using the guidelines developed, two judges were able to segment conversations at all three levels with high reliability. Similarly, other sets of raters used a magnitude estimation procedure to scale the degree of coherence between units at each of these levels and again achieved high reliability. It was also necessary to develop a time-series analytic technique for verifying the predicted series of alternations in short sequences of data, because existing methods are not applicable to small Ns. The new statistic is based on the geometric properties of a particular data set: it compares the obtained sum of the interior angles facing toward the mean of the data series with the sum of the interior angles facing the mean of all other permutations of these data points. Three getting-acquainted conversations were obtained; these yielded 325 statements (the spoken equivalent of a sentence). After segmentation, coherence scaling, and application of the optimization statistic, there was moderate support for the hypothesis of local optimization. Three quarters of the topics contained sequences of propositions with a sum of interior angles that was smaller than the sum of half of the alternative permutations. At the macrotopic level, however, the hypothesis was not supported. The contributions of this dissertation are (1) an explicit, parsimonious, discourse-based theory of coherence; (2) objective methods for measuring and studying coherence; and (3) a new time-series statistic; and (4) encouraging but not yet convincing evidence for the theory. / Graduate

The purpose of this study is to examine the progression of Multicultural to Intercultural Education in the prospect of sustaining social cohesion. Multicultural and Intercultural Education are two major educational pedagogies that came into existence in multicultural societies. The purpose of the case study is to explore the implementation of the practices of Multicultural and Intercultural education as part of fostering the social cohesion in Mauritius. Qualitative data was collected through interviews and a survey which has been conducted to 300 trainees at the Mauritius Institute of Education to examine and analyze their perceptions of Multicultural and Intercultural Education. / 博士(グローバル社会研究) / Doctor of Philosophy in Global Society Studies / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University

One of the most prominent trends in organizations today is the use of teams to accomplish the work once assigned to individuals. Team composition variables, including the personality characteristics of team members, need to be carefully considered so that the transition of work from individuals to teams results in performance improvements. The types of tasks relegated to teams also affect performance, and it is equally important that group tasks are clearly defined. As such, the current study explores the impact of Big Five personality patterns on both group cohesiveness and group performance on creative, brainstorming tasks. At the group level, it was predicted that teams with personality patterns consisting of moderate levels of Extraversion, high levels of Openness to Experience, and high levels of Conscientiousness (Optimal pattern) would perform significantly better on an innovative task than teams with personality patterns that varied from this pattern. It was also hypothesized that group cohesiveness would mediate this relationship. Of the 65 three-person groups, it was found that those possessing the Optimal pattern outperformed groups with three different patterns in terms of the quantity of creative ideas generated and average level of creativity. However, groups with the Optimal pattern generated more superior ideas than only one of the other pattern conditions, and contrary to predictions, did not generate a significantly higher percentage of superior ideas than any of the other pattern conditions. It was also found that group cohesion did not mediate the relationship between group-level personality and creative task performance. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed. / Ph. D.

<p>This investigation explores and analyzes speeches by John McCain and Barack Obama, who were the candidates of the United States Presidential election 2008. Ten speeches by each speaker are in a non-biased way selected from the year 2007 from their official websites when they were senators of Arizona and Illinois respectively. The analyses of the speeches concern cohesive measures and are not about what they say in their political occupation. This approach was selected to see if there are any comparisons and/or contrasts in terms of cohesion between the speakers or within their own set of speeches. The website Coh-Metrix has been used and out of it nine measures have been selected and analyzed in detail. This study looks at the average words per sentence, the average syllables per word, the Flesch Reading Ease score, the average concreteness for content words, the average minimum concreteness for content words, the mean number of higher level constituents, the type-token ratio, the syntactic structure similarity, and the average number of negations. The two speakers had overall very similar results except for a few standard deviations as in for example the average concreteness and average minimum concreteness for content words results. However, eight out of the nine measurement numbers were non-significant according to a t-test for non-matched observations and/or a chi-square goodness-of-fit test. One measurement, the average number of negation expressions per 1000 words, was nonetheless highly significant according to a t-test and chi-square test, as Obama used about twice as many negations in comparison to McCain. This study shows that the speakers’ twenty speeches are similar in terms of structure and cohesion except for the fact that Obama uses more negation expressions compared to McCain. These results do not, however, necessarily say anything else about the speakers and/or speeches.</p><p>Keywords: cohesion, cohesion markers, cohesion measures/measurements, Coh-Metrix, speeches, texts</p>

Disertacijoje nagrinėjamos gramatinės ir leksinės gramatinės sakinių siejimo priemonės (konektoriai), kurios lietuvių kalbotyroje nėra išsamiai ištirtos. Pasirinkta analizės kryptis – nuo funkcijos prie formos – leido ne tik papildyti iki šiol atliktus konektorių lietuvių kalbos tekstuose tyrimus, bet ir atskleisti tų konektorių panašumus ir skirtumus, vartojimo polinkius. Nustatyta, kad gramatinės sakinių siejimo priemonės tiek mokslinio, tiek publicistinio stiliaus tekstuose akivaizdžiai persveria leksines gramatines. Leksinėmis gramatinėmis sakinių siejimo priemonėmis sakiniai siejami be antecedento, todėl siejant sakinius tekste tokiomis priemonėmis aiškumo, logiškumo dėlei pavartojama ir gramatinių siejimo priemonių. Mokslinio stiliaus tekstuose sakinius dažniau linkstama sieti gramatinėmis priemonėmis, kurios dėl savo funkcijų sakinių ryšius daro griežčiau įformintus. Publicistinio stiliaus tekstuose dažniau vartojamos leksinės gramatinės sakinių siejimo priemonės tekstą daro įvairesnį, netrafaretišką. Mokslinio stiliaus tekstuose dėl aprašomų objektų pateikimo principų sakiniams sieti dažniau vartojama sudėjimo ir priežasties konjunkcija. Publicistinio stiliaus tekstuose kohezijos raiška įvairesnė – vartojama ir sudėjimo, ir priešinamoji, ir priežasties, netgi modalinė konjunkcija. / The object of this dissertation is grammatical and lexico-grammatical means of sentence cohesion. This dissertation is the first study which offers a systematic and thorough description of these means in Lithuanian linguistics. The approach adopted in the dissertation – from function to form. It was found that grammatical means of sentence cohesion are much more common than lexico-grammatical means in both scientific and publicistic texts. Lexico-grammatical means of sentence cohesion connect the sentences without the antecedent, therefore, in order to achieve clarity of argumentation in text, additional grammatical means of cohesion are used alongside the lexico-grammatical means. Grammatical means which connect the subsequent sentence with the antecedent in the preceding sentence are more common in scientific texts than in publicistic texts. This way the cohesive ties are made more explicit. While lexico-grammatical means which make the text more varied and less consistent are more characteristic of publicistic texts than scientific texts. In scientific texts, sentences are linked by means of additive and causal conjunction, which is determined by the nature of the presentation of the subject matter. In publicistic texts, however, cohesive means are more varied – alongside additive and causal conjunction, we can find uses of adversative and modal conjunction as well.

This investigation explores and analyzes speeches by John McCain and Barack Obama, who were the candidates of the United States Presidential election 2008. Ten speeches by each speaker are in a non-biased way selected from the year 2007 from their official websites when they were senators of Arizona and Illinois respectively. The analyses of the speeches concern cohesive measures and are not about what they say in their political occupation. This approach was selected to see if there are any comparisons and/or contrasts in terms of cohesion between the speakers or within their own set of speeches. The website Coh-Metrix has been used and out of it nine measures have been selected and analyzed in detail. This study looks at the average words per sentence, the average syllables per word, the Flesch Reading Ease score, the average concreteness for content words, the average minimum concreteness for content words, the mean number of higher level constituents, the type-token ratio, the syntactic structure similarity, and the average number of negations. The two speakers had overall very similar results except for a few standard deviations as in for example the average concreteness and average minimum concreteness for content words results. However, eight out of the nine measurement numbers were non-significant according to a t-test for non-matched observations and/or a chi-square goodness-of-fit test. One measurement, the average number of negation expressions per 1000 words, was nonetheless highly significant according to a t-test and chi-square test, as Obama used about twice as many negations in comparison to McCain. This study shows that the speakers’ twenty speeches are similar in terms of structure and cohesion except for the fact that Obama uses more negation expressions compared to McCain. These results do not, however, necessarily say anything else about the speakers and/or speeches. Keywords: cohesion, cohesion markers, cohesion measures/measurements, Coh-Metrix, speeches, texts

Studiens syfte var att undersöka individens upplevelse gällande samarbete, gruppsammanhållning, förtroende och kollegialt stöd i ett virtuellt team i jämförelse med ett traditionellt team. Studien genomfördes på en rikstäckande myndighet som arbetat med virtuella team i tio år. I studien deltog sju intervjupersoner varav fyra personer var män och tre personer kvinnor som valdes ut genom ett målstyrt urval. Personerna var mellan 28 och 62 år gamla och hade haft en anställning inom vald organisation under minst två år. Personerna ingick i samma team men hade olika platsbundenheter. Data samlades in genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer och analyserades med hjälp av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultatet bekräftade tidigare teori om utmaningar i utvecklande av samarbete, gruppsammanhållning, förtroende och kollegialt stöd inom virtuella team. Intervjupersonerna upplevde ett starkare samarbete, gruppsammanhållning, förtroende och kollegialt stöd för de kollegor som var samplacerade och såg därmed ingen nytta av det virtuella teamet.

Today flexibility is an important part of organizational work. This study investigated the relationship between level of flexibility in scheduling and conflict level in caregiving teams, while controlling for team cohesion, team trust, age, team size and how long they have been in the team. The study was conducted in two small towns in the southeast of Sweden in elderly care and handicap care organizations. The ages of participants varied from 16 to 65 years. Out of 109 participants who filled out questionnaires 61 worked with an adapted (flexible) schedule and 48 with the ordinary schedule. Results showed no significant difference between the scheduling types and the conflict level, even after controlling for the named variables. Overall, it was found that team trust and team cohesion were more important for conflict level than scheduling type. / Today flexibility is an important part of organizational work. This study investigated the relationship between level of flexibility in scheduling and conflict level in caregiving teams, while controlling for team cohesion, team trust, age, team size and how long they have been in the team. The study was conducted in two small towns in the southeast of Sweden in elderly care and handicap care organizations. The ages of participants varied from 16 to 65 years. Out of 109 participants who filled out questionnaires 61 worked with an adapted (flexible) schedule and 48 with the ordinary schedule. Results showed no significant difference between the scheduling types and the conflict level, even after controlling for the named variables. Overall, it was found that team trust and team cohesion were more important for conflict level than scheduling type.