The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the presence of peers upon the oral reading performance of high achieving and low achieving students in a regular classroom setting.Related literature and research in the area of social facilitation has indicated that the presence of an audience serves to increase drive level. The interaction of drive level and habit strength results in the emission of dominant responses. During early stages of learning, incorrect responses are dominant since a response hierarchy has not been established. As learning occurs and mastery level is approached, correct responses become dominant.In order to relate these research findings to the classroom, subjects whose reading skills were below grade level were selected to represent those in the learning stage. Students whose reading skills placed them above grade level were selected to represent those in the mastery stage.The research hypotheses were as follows:1. The presence of peers will adversely affect a student's performance on an oral reading task when the instructional reading level of that student is below grade level.2. The presence of peers will enhance a student's performance on an oral reading task when the instructional reading level of that student is above grade level.Subjects were drawn from five fourth grade classes in two elementary schools in east central Indiana. A total of 76 subjects (34 low achievers and 42 high achievers) participated in the study. Participation in the study required that each student read orally at his instructional level a one hundred word passage in the presence of peers and again in isolation. Instructional levels were determined for each student through the administration of an initial placement test. This is a group test which is provided for each reading level to ensure that the student is placed at his/her instructional level. The passages read were d--aim from supplementary materials provided with the basal. reading series and designed for use at appropriate instructional levels. The passages were unfamiliar to the subjects. Data were collected in the classroom during the regularly schedule reading period in an effort to maintain normal classroom atmosphere. The subject's performance was tape recorded under each treatment condition. These tape recordings were later scored by a panel of judges. Responses which were scored as errors were miscues, repetitions, insertions, and omissions. The dependent variable was the subject's oral reading performance under each of the two treatment conditions. Oral reading performance was selected as the dependent variable because it represents not only an observable, measureable variable, but also an established classroom activity.A repeated measures design was utilized to investigate differences in performance of high achievers and of low achievers under audience present and audience absent conditions. Since the research hypotheses were directional in nature, a one tailed t test for correlated groups was selected to determine the statistical significance of the differences between means using the .05 level of confidence.Results of statistical analysis revealed that there was no significant difference between the oral reading performance of either the low achieving or high achieving groups under audience present and audience absent conditions. Thus support was not found for the research hypotheses that the presence of an audience would adversely affect the oral reading performance of low achieving subjects and enhance the performance of high achieving subjects.

Background The use of school scoliosis screening for early detection of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) in order to avoid the need of invasive surgery remains controversial. In an internationally large population-based cohort of students, the Hong Kong scoliosis screening programme has been shown to have low referral rate of students for radiographic diagnosis and high accuracy in identifying AIS patients requiring clinical follow-up. However, before school scoliosis screening is considered worth implementing, its direct effect on the need of surgery should also be assessed as stipulated in the literature. Therefore, we aimed to examine the temporal change of the rate of AIS patients in need of surgery since the inception of the Hong Kong screening programme in 1995, and assess the change of the rate across age and birth year of adolescents. Methods A large scale data collection was made from the Duchess of Kent Children Hospital (DKCH), the Prince of Wales Hospital (PWH) and the Department of Health. We obtained the screening history, spinal curvature, surgical status and demographics of AIS patients aged between 10 and 19 years who visited either of the DKCH or PWH, the only two public specialist hospitals in Hong Kong that managed AIS patients, during 1996 to 2009. The data have been carefully collated and cleaned before data analysis. Age-period-cohort model estimated by the modern intrinsic estimator was used to delineate the effects due to age, period taken as calendar year, and cohort taken as birth year on the rate of reaching an indication for surgery, taken as a Cobb angle ? 45° or operated for AIS. Results During 1996 and 2009, a total of 1,117,182 students participated in the Hong Kong scoliosis screening programme. Of which, 16,780 visited either DKCH or PWH, and had AIS detected. The incidence rate of AIS in Hong Kong adolescents generally increased over years. The proportion of AIS patients who previously participated in screening for scoliosis was 43% in 1996 and increased to over 90% after 2001. A total of 636 AIS patients received spinal fusion surgery. The mean curvature at operation in patients who were previously screened for scoliosis was 2.48 (95% CI = 11.35 to 12.65; p-value = 0.031) smaller than that in those who were not screened. The relative risk of indication for surgery was the maximal at the age of 14-15 years. Since the start of the programme, the risk of reaching indication for surgery generally increased but the rate was reduced by 2004-2005 onwards. However, the risk was fairly stable across birth cohorts. Conclusions This was the largest study that examined the temporal trend of the rate of requiring surgery for AIS in adolescents. The risk of requiring surgery for AIS increased due to changes in the incidence of AIS and exercise pattern. The Hong Kong scoliosis screening programme has provided important information on the annual trends about AIS, a disorder with unfortunately poor knowledge of its aetiology. / published_or_final_version / Nursing Studies / Master / Master of Philosophy

Performance and throughput rates at South African tertiary institutions are low, especially within the science, engineering and technology fields of study. The causes of this poor performance and throughput are difficult to predict, and incorrect assumptions are often made on which students are most likely to fail. The need to investigate this issue is vital in South Africa, where the contributing factors to poor performance and throughput are exacerbated by recent political and economic disparities in the diverse population. In order to better understand the issue within the built environment sector, this study evaluated the performance and throughput rates of fifteen first-year cohorts within the Department of Quantity Surveying at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. The main aim of this study was to investigate the changes in the student population within the department, and to develop a framework for the future prediction of a student’s likelihood of success or failure. In order to achieve this objective, a retrospective longitudinal approach, i.e. a cohort study, was adopted. The study plotted the trends in performance and throughput rates over a period of time; it measured the strength of the relationships between several variables and performance and throughput; and it culminated in the establishment of predictors of performance and throughput rates. Ultimately, the prediction variables could be utilised in the development of influence diagrams as prediction frameworks. The research revealed that the performance and throughput rates of students in the department are improving. This highlights the importance of undertaking a narrow, departmental level analysis; as the findings in this smaller sphere do not match the general theory and assumptions covered in the literature.

published_or_final_version / Dentistry / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The rapid increase in human longevity has raised important questions about what implications this development may have for the variability of age at death. Earlier studies have reported evidence of a historical trend towards mortality compression. However, the period life table model, commonly used to address mortality compression, produces a compressed picture of mortality as a built-in feature of the model. To overcome this limitation, we base our study on an examination of the durations of exposure, in years of age, of birth cohorts and period life tables to selected short ranges of the death rate observed at old age. Overall, old-age mortality has been decompressing, cohort-wise, since the 1960s. This process may further indicate good prospects for ever-decreasing mortality. In the future, deaths may not be concentrated within a narrow age interval, but will instead become more dispersed, though at ever later ages on average.

A growing body of literature has elaborated the life-course and cohort patterns in the relationships between social factors and depression in Western societies. Nonetheless, far less research has focused on whether inequalities in social status have caused the inequality in misery over the life course in Eastern societies such as Taiwan, which is a collectivist society that has undergone tremendous social change. This research examines the life-course depression trajectories, with taking cohort variations into consideration, and assesses the multidimensional effects of education on depression in a network perspective. This study is based on the nationally representative samples from the repeated cross-sectional Taiwan Social Change Survey and from the longitudinal Survey of Health and Living Status of the Middle Aged and Elderly in Taiwan. Results reveal a U-shaped aging trajectory in depression: depression declines in early adulthood, bottoms out in middle age, and then rises again in late life. This trajectory is the composite outcome established by factors associated with historical trends in education, differential survivals, life stages, health decline, and maturity. Moreover, the direction of the trajectory depends on education. For the well-educated Taiwanese, depression decreases from early adulthood to middle life and maintains relatively stable in old age. For the less educated, depression increases steeply over the life course. Taken together, the education-based disparity increases with age and the pattern even strengthens across more recent cohorts, consistent with respectively the cumulative advantage theory and the rising importance theory. Although late-life convergence is found in cross-sectional analyses, aging vector analyses with FIML estimation and Gompertz survival analysis suggest that selective mortality is the plausible reason. Meanwhile, education is not the only root cause of psychological well-being in Taiwan. Social relationships factors--such as children’s education, co-residence, social support, and familial negative interaction--also demonstrate substantial influence on depression, but mediate educational effects slightly. However, in the aging vector analyses, education is the resource that consistently displays negative coefficients with respect to the slope of depression. Consistent with the resource substitution theory, educational effects are greater for those in disadvantageous statuses. Therefore, increased education is the most specific resource that suppresses the progression of depression over the life course and under difficult times. / text

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 128-139). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 128-139). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 1984. / Description based on print version record. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-106).