The aim of this study was to validate an instrument that can be used by instructors or social scientist who are interested in evaluating statistics anxiety. The psychometric properties of the English version of the Statistical Anxiety Scale (SAS) was examined through a confirmatory factor analysis of scores from a sample of 323 undergraduate social science majors enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States. In previous studies, the psychometric properties of the Spanish and Italian versions of the SAS were validated; however, the English version of the SAS had never been assessed. Inconsistent with previous studies, scores on the English version of the SAS did not produce psychometrically acceptable values of validity. However, the results of this study suggested the potential value of a revised two-factor model SAS to measure statistics anxiety. Additionally, the Attitudes Towards Statistics (ATS) scale was used to examine the convergent and discriminant validities of the two-factor SAS. As expected, the correlation between the two factors of the SAS and the two factors of the ATS uncovered a moderately negative correlation between examination anxiety and attitudes towards the course. Additionally, the results of a structural regression model of attitudes towards statistics as a predictor of statistics anxiety suggested that attitudes towards the course and attitudes towards the field of statistics moderately predicts examination anxiety with attitudes towards the course having the greatest influence. It is recommended that future studies examine the relationship between attitudes towards statistics, statistics anxiety, and other variables such as academic achievement and instructional style.

Emotional intelligence has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the past few years specifically with regard to the nature of the underlying construct and the reliability and validity of the psychometric tools used to measure the construct. The present study explored the reliability and validity of a trait measure of EI in relation to an ability measure in order to determine whether the tools can be considered as measuring conceptually valid constructs within an occupational environment. The study also examined the overlap with a trait measure of cognitive thinking styles to determine the potential for separating the trait and ability EI into two unique and distinguishable constructs. Participants included 308 employees from four different workforces within a diverse South African consulting firm. The results of the study identified a number of psychometric concerns regarding the structural fidelity of the instruments as well as concerns about the cultural bias evident in both measurement instruments. Evidence for the discriminant and incremental validity of the two instruments was, however, provided and recommendations are made for the reconceptualisation of trait EI as an emotional competence and ability EI as an emotional intelligence. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)

Researchers perform multivariate techniques MANOVA, discriminant analysis and factor analysis. The most common applications in social science are to identify and test the effects from the analysis. The use of this multivariate technique is uncommon in investigating the effects of power usage and Province in South Africa on the amounts of the five power modes. This dissertation discusses this issue, the methodology and practical problems of the three multivariate techniques. The author examines the applications of each technique in social public research and comparisons are made between the three multivariate techniques. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of both the concepts of the present multivariate techniques and the results found on the use of the three multivariate techniques in the energy household consumption. The author recommends focusing on the hypotheses of the study or typical questions surrounding of each technique to guide the researcher in choosing the appropriate analysis in the social research, as each technique has some strengths and limitations. / Statistics / M. Sc. (Statistics)

School physical science is a prerequisite for science courses at institutions of higher education. Science graduates are an important link in a nation's scientific and technological development which often shapes a country's economic development. The purpose of this study was to investigate psychological and social factors influencing physical science achievement and attitude of black secondary school students in South Africa. The first part of the literature study which was concerned with physical science education in South Africa revealed that few black students chose to study science after standard seven, that failure rates were high and that science education was generally in a state of crisis. The second part of the literature study identified psychological and social factors related to science achievement and attitude. These were home environment variables, teacher and school related variables, personal variables (self-concept, motivation, gender, ethnicity) and students' abilities. The third part was the construction of a Structural Equation Model (SEM) specifying the relationships among the psychological and social factors and their effects on physical science achievement and attitude. The theoretical SEM fit the data reasonably well. The best fitting model, however, was a revised model in which several paths were constrained. The latter accounted for a substantial variance in attitude towards physical science (70.3%) and a meagre 17.7% in physical science achievement. The variables ability, home environment and self-concept had the greatest total effects on physical science achievement. Self-concept, home environment and motivation made the greatest total contributions to physical science attitude. Teacher characteristics and school environment had non-significant effects on physical science achievement and attitude. Multiple-group structural equation modelling analyses found no significant difference in the structural parameters of boys and girls. Theoretical and educational implications of the findings were discussed and specific recommendations for improving educational practice in general and physical science achievement and attitude in particular, were made. / Psychology of Education / D. Ed. (Psychology of Education)

The purpose of the study was to identify and transform, as necessary, constructs of communication satisfaction and to develop a hybrid quantitative audit of organisational communication satisfaction for collectivist contexts that is both reliable and valid, using Amos Graphics for structural equation modelling. The objective was also to develop a full latent variable model and to test its fitness to the data collected from a random sample of civil servants across Addis Ababa’s civil service bureaus. The study comprised three sequential parts, namely pilot, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (Main Study One) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (Main Study Two). These were used as per the existing framework in instrument development and validation. The pilot study indicated the need for more robust data. After a series of tests, principal factor axis factoring with oblique rotation was used as the most appropriate for perceptual data, out of several options on the EFA menu. The initially hypothesised six-factor solution with the dimensions of horizontal communication, personal feedback, supervisory communication, communication climate, relational trust and job satisfaction was found to be unfit for the data on conceptual and statistical grounds and psychometric analyses which involved the use of eigenvalues and the scree plot. A more appropriate two-factor solution based on the more precise parallel analysis strategy was consistent with current research that communication satisfaction is best conceptualised in terms of informational and relational domains as operationalised using the EFA procedure. The two-factor solution led to the formation of a 17-item scale out of the original 30-item measure, with two latent dimensions namely relational satisfaction and informational satisfaction. The items of the new EFA-generated organisational communication satisfaction scale were renumbered consecutively and the scale was cross-validated on a xiv new sample of 288 civil servants from the Addis Ababa City Administration. The cross-validation necessitated model respecification and re-estimation. The respecified model underwent validation at different levels. All seven aspects of validity, namely content validity, construct validity, factorial validity, reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity and nomological validity, were addressed and found to be adequate. However limitations are also indicated as avenues for further enquiry. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Communication)

Im Rahmen von drei Teilstudien wurde mathematische Schülerleistung aus einer differentialpsychologischen Perspektive untersucht. Die hierfür verwendeten Daten stammten von 29.386 deutschen Neuntklässlern, die am Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) im Jahr 2000 teilnahmen. In Studie 1 wurden ausgehend von Strukturtheorien kognitiver Fähigkeiten verschiedene Strukturmodelle mathematischer Schülerleistung konfirmatorisch geprüft. So wurde mathematische Schülerleistung in Form eines Nested-Faktormodell als additive Funktion einer mathematikspezifischen Fähigkeit (M´) und der allgemeinen kognitiven Fähigkeit (g) spezifiziert. Dieses Modell wies einen besseren Modellfit auf als das in der psychologischen Forschung dominierende Standardmodell. Für Letzteres wurde angenommen, dass Maße mathematischer Schülerleistung nur von einer generellen mathematischen Fähigkeit (M) beeinflusst werden. In Studie 2 wurden Schulformunterschiede mit konfirmatorischen Mehrgruppen-Faktormodellen untersucht. Schulformspezifische Mittelwertunterschiede in M waren im Standardmodell wesentlich stärker ausgeprägt als bei M´ im Nested-Faktormodell. Weiterhin wurde eine schulformspezifische Differenzierungshypothese für M´ untersucht. Entgegen der Erwartung konnte diese nur sehr eingeschränkt von den Daten gestützt werden. In Studie 3 wurde die Validität mathematischer Schülerleistung im Hinblick auf soziodemografische und motivationale Schülermerkmale sowie Schulnoten analysiert. Bei Verwendung des Nested-Faktormodells resultierte ein im Vergleich zum Standardmodell wesentlich differenzierteres Befundmuster. So waren Geschlechterunterschiede (zu Gunsten der Jungen) in M´ im Nested-Faktormodell deutlich stärker ausgeprägt als bei M im Standardmodell. Implikationen und Perspektiven der drei Teilstudien werden für die psychologische Forschung, die Lehr-Lernforschung, die Konzeption von Schülerleistungsstudien sowie für die pädagogische Praxis diskutiert. / Three studies investigated mathematics achievement from an individual differences perspective, using data from 29,386 German ninth graders who participated in the 2000 cycle of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In study 1, different structural models of mathematics achievement were derived from structural theories of cognitive abilities, and tested empirically using confirmatory methods. In a nested-factor model, mathematics achievement was specified to be an additive function of specific mathematical ability (M´) and general cognitive ability (g). This model provided a better fit than the standard model that predominates in psychological research, which assumes that measures of mathematical achievement are only influenced by general mathematical ability (M). In study 2, differences between types of schools were analyzed using confirmatory multigroup factor analytic models. Mean differences in M in the standard model were much stronger than in M´ in the nested-factor model. A school-type-specific differentiation hypothesis for M´ was also investigated. Contrary to predictions, the data provided only limited support for this hypothesis. Study 3 analyzed the validity of mathematics achievement with respect to sociodemographic and motivational student characteristics and school grades. The nested-factor model yielded a much more differentiated pattern of results than the standard model. For example, gender differences (in favor of boys) were much more pronounced in M´ in the nested-factor model than in M in the standard model. The implications and future perspectives of studies 1 to 3 are discussed with respect to psychological and educational research, design of large-scale achievement studies, and educational practice.

「奢侈平民化」帶動奢侈品牌年年高成長的業績，卻迫使品牌必須面對截然不同的消費者態度與品味。品牌欲持續保有強勢地位，必須了解奢侈在消費者心目中的意義以及消費者如何評估奢侈品牌。因此，本研究欲探討台灣精品消費者認知中構成品牌奢侈的因素，建構衡量品牌奢侈之量表，並以量表探討消費者購買經驗對奢侈認知之影響，及分析個別品牌的現況及優劣勢，研擬具體的競爭策略方向。 本研究選取五個奢侈品牌作為分析標的，進行實證研究，期望達到下列研究目的： (1)驗證品牌奢侈量表，建立評估奢侈品牌的管理工具； (2)探討不同奢侈品牌購買經驗之消費者對各品牌奢侈認知的差異性； (3)探討各奢侈品牌在消費者心目中的知覺定位，擬定未來的策略方向。 依本研究之目的，擬定研究架構及確立抽樣設計，並發放問卷收集消費者資訊。之後以二階驗證性因素分析檢驗品牌奢侈量表模式品質；再利用量表探討不同購買經驗對奢侈認知的影響；最後則以多元尺度分析進行知覺定位分析，經實證分析得到以下研究發現： (1)品牌奢侈包含知覺炫耀性、知覺獨特性、知覺品質、知覺享樂價值與知覺延伸自我等五個構面，其影響力依序排列為知覺享樂價值>知覺延伸自我>知覺獨特性>知覺炫耀性>知覺品質。 (2)台灣地區消費者於購買奢侈品牌之產品後，對品牌奢侈程度的認知無明顯地降低，對品牌的奢侈評價與無購買經驗者沒有顯著差異。 (3)各奢侈品牌的改善重點主要包括知覺品質、知覺享樂價值以及知覺獨特性等三項，其中知覺品質為市場最重要之關鍵因素。 根據實證分析之結果，衍生出許多的策略涵意，包括掌握關鍵因素、規劃競爭策略以及未來發展方向等，可以作為奢侈品牌改善或塑造奢侈形象及規劃策略方向的參考依據。 / “Luxury Democratization” brings great growth to the luxury goods market, but also forced these brands to confront consumers with different attitudes and tastes. As a result, it is critical for luxury brand managers to understand consumer’s perception of brand luxury in order to maintain the brands’ luxury image. This research focused on the confirmation of Brand Luxury Scale to understand Taiwanese cousumers’ perception of brand luxury. Based on the Scale, the influence of purchase experience to luxury perception was tested, and the competitive advantages of five luxury brands were analyzed. Competitive strategies of each brand were futher developed. Research was conducted by using five luxury brands and expected to achieve the following research purposes: (1)Confirm the Brand Luxury Scale to establish a managerial tool for brand luxuriousness evaluation; (2)Use the Brand Luxury Scale to evaluate the influence of purchase experience to luxury perception; (3)Use the Brand Luxury Scale to evaluate consumers’ perception of different brands, and seek to imply different competitive strategies for these brands base on the analysis. After the conduction of research framework, sampling design and data collection, Secondary Comfirmatory Factor Analysis was used to confirm the structure of Brand Luxury Scale. 1-Way ANOVA was used to test the influence of purchase experience to luxury perception. Finally, Multi-Dimensional Scaling Analysis was implied to analyze the perceptual position of each brand. The research findings are as below: (1)Brand Luxury is constructed by five dimensions: Perceived Conspicuousness, Perceived Uniqueness, Perceived Quality, Perceived Hedonic, and Perceived Extended-self. The order of dimensional influence is Perceived Hedonic> Perceived Extended -self> Perceived Uniqueness> Perceived Conspicuousness> Perceived Quality. (2)No difference in brand luxury perception between different purchasing experience consumers was found, showing that the perceptions of brand luxury of Taiwanese consumers’ remain unchanged after purchase. (3)Perceived Quality is the most important dimension of all, and the five luxury brands tested needs to improve in dimensions of Perceived Quality, Perceived Hedonic, and Perceived Uniqueness. According to the results, several managerial implications were derived, including key factors in marketing and competitive strategy of each brand. These strategies can be used in improving the performance of perceived luxuriousness of brand, enhancing brand luxury image, and planning the direction of luxury marketing and brand strategy.

In the shift to a globalised creative economy where innovation and creativity are increasingly prized, many studies have documented direct and indirect social and economic benefits of the arts. In addition, arts workers have been argued to possess capabilities which are of great benefit both within and outside the arts, including (in addition to creativity) problem solving abilities, emotional intelligence, and team working skills (ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, 2007). However, the labour force characteristics of professional artists in Australia and elsewhere belie their importance. The average earnings of workers in the arts sector are consistently less than other workers with similar educational backgrounds, and their rates of unemployment and underemployment are much higher (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005; Caves, 2000; Throsby & Hollister, 2003). Graduating students in the arts appear to experience similar employment challenges and exhibit similar patterns of work to artists in general. Many eventually obtain work unrelated to the arts or go back to university to complete further tertiary study in fields unrelated to arts (Graduate Careers Council of Australia, 2005a). Recent developments in career development theory have involved discussion of the rise of boundaryless careers amongst knowledge workers. Boundaryless careers are characterised by non-linear career progression occurring outside the bounds of a single organisation or field (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996a, 1996b). The protean career is an extreme form of the boundaryless career, where the careerist also possesses strong internal career motivations and criteria for success (Baruch, 2004; Hall, 2004; Hall & Mirvis, 1996). It involves a psychological contract with one's self rather than an organisation or organisations. The boundaryless and protean career literature suggests competencies and dispositions for career self-management and career success, but to date there has been minimal empirical work investigating the predictive value of these competencies and dispositions to career success in the boundaryless or protean career. This program of research employed competencies and dispositions from boundaryless and protean career theory to predict career success in professional artists and tertiary arts graduates. These competencies and dispositions were placed into context using individual and contextual career development influences suggested by the Systems Theory Framework of career development (McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a). Four substantive studies were conducted, using online surveys with professional artists and tertiary arts students / graduates, which were preceded by a pilot study for measure development. A largely quantitative approach to the program of research was preferred, in the interests of generalisability of findings. However, at the time of data collection, there were no quantitative measures available which addressed the constructs of interest. Brief scales of Career Management Competence based on the Australian Blueprint for Career Development (Haines, Scott, & Lincoln, 2003), Protean Career Success Orientation based on the underlying dispositions for career success suggested by protean career theory, and Career Development Influences based on the Systems Theory Framework of career development (McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a) were constructed and validated via a process of pilot testing and exploratory factor analyses. This process was followed by confirmatory factor analyses with data collected from two samples: 310 professional artists, and 218 graduating arts students who participated at time 1 (i.e., at the point of undergraduate course completion in October, 2005). Confirmatory factor analyses via Structural Equation Modelling conducted in Study 1 revealed that the scales would benefit from some respecification, and so modifications were made to the measures to enhance their validity and reliability. The three scales modified and validated in Study 1 were then used in Studies 3 and 4 as potential predictors of career success for the two groups of artists under investigation, along with relevant sociodemographic variables. The aim of the Study 2 was to explore the construct of career success in the two groups of artists studied. Each participant responded to an open-ended question asking them to define career success. The responses for professional artists were content analysed using emergent coding with two coders. The codebook was later applied to the arts students' definitions. The majority of the themes could be grouped into four main categories: internal definitions; financial recognition definitions; contribution definitions; and non-financial recognition definitions. Only one third of the definition themes in the professional artists' and arts graduates' definitions of career success were categorised as relating to financial recognition. Responses within the financial recognition category also indicated that many of the artists aspired only to a regular subsistence level of arts income (although a small number of the arts graduates did aspire to fame and fortune). The second section of the study investigated the statistical relationships between the five different measures of career success for each career success definitional category and overall. The professional artists' and arts graduates' surveys contained several measures of career success, including total earnings over the previous 12 months, arts earnings over the previous 12 months, 1-6 self-rated total employability, 1-6 self-rated arts employability, and 1-6 self-rated self-defined career success. All of the measures were found to be statistically related to one another, but a very strong statistical relationship was identified between each employability measure and its corresponding earnings measure for both of the samples. Consequently, it was decided to include only the earnings measures (earnings from arts, and earnings overall) and the self-defined career success rating measure in the later studies. Study 3 used the career development constructs validated in Study 1, sociodemographic variables, and the career success measures explored in Study 2 via Classification and Regression Tree (CART - Breiman, Friedman, Olshen, & Stone, 1984) style decision trees with v-fold crossvalidation pruning using the 1 SE rule. CART decision trees are a nonparametric analysis technique which can be used as an alternative to OLS or hierarchical regression in the case of data which violates parametric statistical assumptions. The three optimal decision trees for total earnings, arts earnings and self defined career success ratings explained a large proportion of the variance in their respective target variables (R2 between 0.49 and 0.68). The Career building subscale of the Career Management Competence scale, pertaining to the ability to manage the external aspects of a career, was the most consistent predictor of all three career success measures (and was the strongest predictor for two of the three trees), indicating the importance of the artists' abilities to secure work and build the external aspects of a career. Other important predictors included the Self management subscale of the Career Management Competence scale, Protean Career Success Orientation, length of time working in the arts, and the positive role of interpersonal influences, skills and abilities, and interests and beliefs from the Career Development Influences scale. Slightly different patterns of predictors were found for the three different career success measures. Study 4 also involved the career development constructs validated in Study 1, sociodemographic variables, and the career success measures explored in Study 2 via CART style decision trees. This study used a prospective repeated measures design where the data for the attribute variables were gathered at the point of undergraduate course completion, and the target variables were measured one year later. Data from a total of 122 arts students were used, as 122 of the 218 students who responded to the survey at time 1 (October 2005) also responded at time 2 (October 2006). The resulting optimal decision trees had R2 values of between 0.33 and 0.46. The values were lower than those for the professional artists' decision trees, and the trees themselves were smaller, but the R2 values nonetheless indicated that the arts students' trees possessed satisfactory explanatory power. The arts graduates' Career building scores at time 1 were strongly predictive of all three career success measures at time 2, a similar finding to the professional artists' trees. A further similarity between the trees for the two samples was the strong statistical relationship between Career building, Self management, and Protean Career Success Orientation. However, the most important variable in the total earnings tree was arts discipline category. Technical / design arts graduates consistently earned more overall than arts graduates from other disciplines. Other key predictors in the arts graduates' trees were work experience in arts prior to course completion, positive interpersonal influences, and the positive influence of skills and abilities and interests and beliefs on career development. The research program findings represent significant contributions to existing knowledge about artists' career development and success, and also the transition from higher education to the world of work, with specific reference to arts and creative industries programs. It also has implications for theory relating to career success and protean / boundaryless careers.

Text in English / This study investigates the nature of spiritual intelligence and its link to ethnic identity, and gauges the difference across the main ethnic groups in Mauritius. A new scale, the Multicultural Spiritual Intelligence Scale (MSIS) was proposed, using the following six dimensions: self-awareness, transcendental awareness, levels of consciousness, the quest for meaning, sensitivity, and resilience. The MSIS was developed and tested using a cross-sectional survey research design with the option of completing a paper or online version, administered to a sample of 1,177 adult participants in Mauritius. This research looked at the three major ethnic groups in Mauritius: Hindu-Mauritians, Creole-Mauritians, and Muslim-Mauritians, and examined their conceptions of spiritual intelligence and ethnic identification. A factor analysis was conducted on the scale and five specific factors: self-mastery, transcendental awareness, spiritual sensitivity, resilience, and the existential quest. These factors emerged with factor loadings greater than 0.35. The MSIS’s construct validity was tested with other similar scales, particularly Meaning in Life (MLQ) (Steger et al., 2006), the Connor-Davison Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) (Connor & Davidson, 2011), Private Self-Consciousness (PSC) (Scheir & Carver, 1985), and New Indices of Religious Orientation (NIRO) (Francis, 2007). The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) (Paulhus, 1991) was also included to check for social desirable responses and MSIS’s divergent validity. A Welch ANOVA revealed a statistical difference in spiritual intelligence among the ethnic groups: Welch’s F (2, 639.98) = 3.923. Spearman’s rank order correlation revealed that ethnic identification was connected to spiritual intelligence: rs (98) = 0.52, p < 0.0005. A Games-Howell post-hoc analysis indicated a statistically significant mean difference between Muslim-Mauritians and Hindu Mauritians (0.27, 95% CI [0.083, 0.45]) and between Muslim-Mauritians and Creole Mauritians (0.44, 95% CI [0.25, 0.62]). The Muslim-Mauritians obtained the highest score in both ethnic exploration and ethnic commitment. Ethnic identification implied a prior quest for identity, which was connected with spiritual development. A second study was conducted on a sample of 303 participants using a shorter version of MSIS to confirm the five-factor model. Implications for further research include analysing the MSIS in terms of other constructs and using the MSIS with other minority groups in Mauritius. / Psychology / D.Litt et Phil. (Psychology)

Emotional intelligence has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the past few years specifically with regard to the nature of the underlying construct and the reliability and validity of the psychometric tools used to measure the construct. The present study explored the reliability and validity of a trait measure of EI in relation to an ability measure in order to determine whether the tools can be considered as measuring conceptually valid constructs within an occupational environment. The study also examined the overlap with a trait measure of cognitive thinking styles to determine the potential for separating the trait and ability EI into two unique and distinguishable constructs. Participants included 308 employees from four different workforces within a diverse South African consulting firm. The results of the study identified a number of psychometric concerns regarding the structural fidelity of the instruments as well as concerns about the cultural bias evident in both measurement instruments. Evidence for the discriminant and incremental validity of the two instruments was, however, provided and recommendations are made for the reconceptualisation of trait EI as an emotional competence and ability EI as an emotional intelligence. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)