Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2005. / Principal faculty advisor: Samuel L. Gaertner, Dept. of Psychology. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-86).

D.Litt. et Phil. (Psychology) / Please refer to dull text to view abstract

The theoretical construct of control has been defined as necessary (Etzioni, 1965), ubiquitous (Vickers, 1967), and on-going (E. Langer, 1983). Empirical measures, however, have not adequately given meaning to this potent construct, especially within complex organizations such as schools. Four stages of theory-development and empirical testing of school building managerial control using principals and teachers working within the nation's fourth largest district are presented in this dissertation as follows: (1) a review and synthesis of social science theories of control across the literatures of organizational theory, political science, sociology, psychology, and philosophy; (2) a systematic analysis of school managerial activities performed at the building level within the context of curricular and instructional tasks; (3) the development of a survey questionnaire to measure school building managerial control; and (4) initial tests of construct validity including inter-item reliability statistics, principal components analyses, and multivariate tests of significance. The social science synthesis provided support of four managerial control processes: standards, information, assessment, and incentives. The systematic analysis of school managerial activities led to further categorization between structural frequency of behaviors and discretionary qualities of behaviors across each of the control processes and the curricular and instructional tasks. Teacher survey responses (N=486) reported a significant difference between these two dimensions of control, structural frequency and discretionary qualities, for standards, information, and assessments, but not for incentives. The descriptive model of school managerial control suggests that (1) teachers perceive structural and discretionary managerial behaviors under information and incentives more clearly than activities representing standards or assessments, (2) standards are primarily structural while assessments are primarily qualitative, (3) teacher satisfaction is most closely related to the equitable distribution of incentives, (4) each of the structural managerial behaviors has a qualitative effect on teachers, and that (5) certain qualities of managerial behaviors are perceived by teachers as distinctly discretionary, apart from school structure. The variables of teacher tenure and school effectiveness reported significant effects on school managerial control processes, while instructional levels (elementary, junior, and senior) and individual school differences were not found to be significant for the construct of school managerial control.

Self-efficacy is considered to be a significant variable for enhancing all aspects of human performance (Druckman, 2004). Social support may influence self-efficacy through each of the four channels of self-efficacy information which consist of performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and physiological responses (Bandura, 1997). The primary aim of this study was to explore and describe the nature of change that occurred in selfefficacy and received social support of university-age academy cricketers over the duration of an academy programme. The secondary aim was to explore and describe the relationship between the two constructs, self-efficacy and social support. Sixty-five male, university-age (18-25 years) provincial academy cricketers completed a social support measure and a self-efficacy measure specifically designed for the purposes of this study. These measures were based on Rees and Freeman’s (2007) items and Cox, Martens and Russell’s (2003) revised Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2 - Martens, Burton, Vealey, Bump & Smith, 1990) respectively. The perceived pre- and post-academy personal ratings of self-efficacy and social support, obtained prior to the start of the South African Interprovincial Academy Cricket week, referred to participants’ perceptions before and after attending their respective provincial academies. An inferential pre-experimental post-pretest design was used. The results included significant changes found in self-efficacy, esteem social support, informational social support and tangible social support over the academy season. There were no differences attributed to the length of time a cricketer had spent at the academy or to the cricketer’s highest level of achievement in cricket. The only significant correlation that existed between self-efficacy and social support was the correlation between self-efficacy and x informational social support. This study provided an initial insight into the role of self-efficacy and social support in talented cricketers, especially in a South African context.

To test the hypothesis that a discrepancy between expectation and experience with regard to the controllability of outcomes would produce the greatest effect on later task behavior, 70 undergraduate volunteers were directed individually in a multiphase experiment. The first phase was designed to induce expectations of control or lack of control over outcomes. The second phase was designed to confirm or not to confirm the expectations induced. The third phase tested for the effects on later task behavior. The results indicated that the first phase procedure failed to induce the required expectancies, thus preventing a test of the experimental hypothesis. Possible procedural changes were discussed.

This study proposed that a major function of coping is to regain perceptions of control that are threatened by the cancer experience and that perceived control mediates the relationship between coping and adjustment. Participants were 258 cancer patients, 61 % women and 39% men, aged 29 to 93 years. A variety of cancer sites were represented with breast and prostate cancer the most prevalent. Patterns of coping, perceived control in four areas (symptom-emotion, relationship, medical care, and disease control), and emotional adjustment were measured. It was expected that a sixth pattern of coping, problem-focused, would emerge when additional problem-focused items were added to the Ways of Coping-Cancer inventory. However, the expected problem-focused pattern was not distinct from the seek and use social support pattern. It was suggested that seeking and using social support may be a problem-focused strategy when dealing with relationships that are altered by the cancer experience. The study provided some support for the notion that symptom-emotion control has a greater influence than disease control on emotional adjustment as measured by the bipolar Profile of Mood States. However, all four areas of perceived control made substantial contributions to emotional adjustment. The findings only partially supported the proposed model in which perceived control mediated the relationship between coping and adjustment. All five patterns of coping influenced perceived control, and perceived control was strongly associated with emotional adjustment. The cognitive escape-avoidant pattern of coping exerted an indirect (mediated) influence on emotional adjustment through perceived control. The behavioral escape-avoidant and focus on the positive patterns exerted both indirect and direct influences on emotional adjustment. While social support and distancing coping patterns were not predictive of emotional adjustment, they did predict perceived control. It was suggested that efforts to bolster cancer patients' emotional adjustment should focus on both teaching positive coping strategies and on efforts to increase perceptions of control.

No description available.

No description available.

The present investigation tested the prediction that effortless control processing, the deliberate activation of innate automatic encoding mechanisms, will enable nondepressed persons to accurately judge degree of control. Subjective judgment of control in nondepressed students was examined by a modification of the method developed by Jenkins and Ward (1965). The modification was based on Hasher and Zacks' (1979) version of the method. Several measures were used to assess students' representations of control. Students were asked to judge the degree of control their responses had over outcomes rather than the degree of contingency between responses and outcomes. To facilitate comparison of prior studies on the judgment of contingency with the present study, Jenkins and Ward's (1965) index of the actual degree of control was used. Their index used the magnitude of the difference between the conditional probability of an outcome given the occurrence of one response versus the conditional probability of the outcome given the occurrence of another response as representing degree of control or contingency. In this experiment, students instructed in effortful control processing and effortless control processing were presented with a series of problems in which there was no contingency between their responses and outcomes. The problems differed in the degree of favorable outcome frequency. Students' abilities to detect noncontingency between responses and outcomes under different conditions of outcome frequency was examined.