Thesis (M.P.A.)--Kutztown University. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2957. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-110).

Thesis (M.S. in Defense Analysis)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2007. / Thesis Advisor(s): Gordon McCormick. "June 2007." Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-52). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed April 26, 2007). PDF text: 142 p. : ill. UMI publication number: AAT 3229556. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (M.S.)-- Carnegie-Mellon University, 1983. / Bibliography : p. 72-73.

Proefschrift Universiteit Maastricht. / Met bibliogr., lit. opg. - Met samenvatting in het Nederlands.

Thesis (M.S.)--Duquesne University, 2005. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references and abstract.

In today's business world, the role of children in the family buying decision-making process is continuously getting the importance and attention of researchers, academics, and business organizations. The depth of children‟s influence on the family is still untapped in the contemporary research process. Changes in socioeconomic and demographic structures considerably increase the involvement of children in their family decision making. This has created an analysis gap in this field of study. No prior research was conducted in this field of study with particular reference to Bangladesh Bangladeshi and the British Bangladeshi children. The main area of interest of the thesis is to explore the role of children in the family buying process. The review of the literature proposes a conceptual framework/model which considers different socioeconomic and demographic factors. The literature does not only describe the influence of children in the family buying decision stages, but it also discusses the degree and influence of other factors. A detailed comparison is made of the roles between children in Bangladesh Bangladeshi and the British Bangladeshi families. The pedagogical conceptual framework works as a precursor to form the research hypotheses used to analyze the data more critically. A cluster random sampling was used to collect the data from the United Kingdom and Bangladesh. Data was collected directly from 200 respondents through the structured questionnaire system. Secondary data was used to analyze the research gap. A structured questionnaire was pre-tested in order to measure the validity, reliability and proper justification of the conduct of the study. Statistical tools were used to analyze the descriptive and multivariate analysis for the quantitative data. Analysis of the data assisted in testing the hypotheses guiding the study and explored new research phenomena in which the role of children in the family buying decision-making process was identified. Any research gap will form the recommendations of the study.

“[The] sense of sameness is the very keel and backbone of our thinking” (James, 1890). To make sense of the ever-shifting information in our environment, we constantly assess whether the world around us changes or not, if objects are the “same” or if they are “different”. This basic decision-making process is found from the lowest level of cognition (e.g. when contrasts are encoded by the retina), to the highest (e.g. when comparing concepts), and anywhere in between. In an experimental context, this process is studied with the “same-different” task, where subjects are asked if two stimuli presented sequentially are strictly identical or not. This experiment has been documented since the 1960s and its results have been replicated with diverse stimuli types (letters, shapes, faces, words, etc.). However, every attempt to model the subjects’ accuracy and response times on correct and incorrect answers simultaneously was unsuccessful so far. Part of the challenge in explaining this task is that “same” answers are faster than expected compared to “different” answers, a phenomenon called the “fast-same effect”. This thesis aims to assess whether a formal model based on the inhibition of “different” answers is plausible, effectively changing the problem from “fast-same” to “slow-different”. In the first chapter, I review the previous theories and models of the same-different task to learn why they failed. By elimination process, I identify the only cognitive architecture that seems congruent with the data. I then propose a model prototype based on the inhibition of “different” answers that implements this architecture. In the second chapter, I test this prototype with an experimental paradigm designed specifically to assess its plausibility. I conclude that resources should be spent in developing a formal model based on the inhibition of “different” answers, as the prototype’s qualitative predictions are confirmed by both the typical same-different data and the newly acquired data.

This thesis seeks to better understand the nature of, and relationships between knowledge, data and information. The context selected for this work was clinical practice in the UK National Health Service (NHS) beginning with the generation and use of clinical knowledge. The thesis undertakes a critical examination of the relationship between that knowledge and the data it produces, and the large-scale statistical data sets generated from it via a number of human, technological, systemic and mathematical processes. The statistical data sets were regarded as important because they were highly influential, being used as the basis for significant and far-reaching decisions about healthcare in the NHS. These decisions included policymaking, financial allocations, and allocations of services and other resources. This situation provided fertile ground for this research because the clinical knowledge and data were believed to be subjective to some unknown degree. The statistical data sets, however, were endowed with objective and scientific value. The thesis explores and explains this apparent contradiction. In addressing this issue, the thesis encompasses philosophical, sociological and technological concerns and develops explanatory theories grounded in data collected. Data was collected by a process of extensive qualitative field-based investigation undertaken with clinicians, and data collectors, handlers and users in their operating environments. Key concepts underpinning these theories involve the social construction of reality as a product of individual and group frames of reference; social construction of reality as a result of social arrangements for professional groups; social construction of reality as a result of the pursuance of ontological security; and lastly, the phenomena of structural contradiction and conflict. Of major relevance in this was Giddens' work (1976, 1984) on Structuration Theory, in particular in terms of exploring the effects of sociologically-based frames of reference on creation and transfer of meaning in informational terms. This work was also influential in terms of the notion of structural contradiction and conflict and its informational effects. Application of this abstract, meta-level theory to this real-world situation also led to one of the main contributions to theory. This engagement with reality enabled refinement of its underpinning model. It also demonstrated its explanatory power. This strengthens the validity of the theory and renders it more accessible to other researchers. The thesis indicates clinicians' use of information and subsequent recording of data represents a highly personalised area of professional activity. This does not subsequently translate easily into the data sets and statistical classification schemes that are in common usage in healthcare management. These findings led to conclusions which confirmed initial perceptions of statistical clinical datasets as having a tenuous connection with the clinical knowledge and events upon which they purport to be based. Drawing on evidence which describes knowledge as being situationally-dependent, the conclusions also assert that the transformation of original meaning this implies is largely due to social influences. Finally they claim that the apparent rationality of decisions made on the basis of the transformed meaning, while the result of calculative thought designed to justify related decisions, is misguided in that it has no foundation in the evidence presented. The document ends with a call for a fundamental reassessment of the types of knowledge processed routinely through systems, and of the ways in which those types are handled.

The theory of Loss Functions Is a fundamental part of Statistical Decision Theory and of Pattern Recognition. However It is a subject which few have studied In detail. This thesis is an attempt to develop a simple character recognition process In which losses may be Implemented when and where necessary. After a brief account of the history of Loss Functions and an Introduction to elementary Decision Theory, some examples have been constructed to demonstrate how various decision boundaries approximate to the optimal boundary and what Increase In loss would be associated with these sub-optimal boundaries. The results show that the Euclidean and Hamming distance discriminants can be sufficiently close approximations that the decision process may be legitimately simplified by the use of these linear boundaries. Geometric moments were adopted for the computer simulation of the recognition process because each moment is closely related to the symmetry and structure of a character, unlike many other features. The theory of Moments is discussed, in particular their geometrical properties. A brief description of the programs used in the simulation follows. Two different data sets were investigated, the first being hand-drawn capitals and the second machine-scanned lower case type script. This latter set was in the form of a message, which presented interesting programming problems in itself. The results from the application of different discriminants to these sets under conditions of simple loss are analysed and the recognition efficiencies are found to vary between about 30% and. 99% depending on the number of moments being used and the type of discriminant. Next certain theoretical problems are studied. The relations between the rejection rate, the error rate and the rejection threshold are discussed both theoretically and practically. Also an attempt is made to predict theoretically the variation of efficiency with the number of moments used in the discrimination. This hypothesis is then tested on the data already calculated and shown to be true within reasonable limits. A discussion of moment ordering by defining their re-solving powers is undertaken and it seems likely that the moments normally used unordered are among the most satisfactory. Finally, some time is devoted towards methods of improving recognition efficiency. Information content is discussed along with the possibilities inherent in the use of digraph and trigraph probabilities. A breakdown of the errors in the recognition system adopted here is presented along with suggestions to improve the technique. The execution time of the different decision mechanisms is then inspected and a refined 2-Stage method is produced. Lastly the various methods by which a decision mechanism might be improved are united under a common loss matrix, formed by a product of matrices each of which represents a particular facet of the recognition problem.