This research utilizes the case study method to examine the effectiveness of truancy statutes recently implemented in Florida's Fourth Judicial Circuit prior to the 1999-2000 school year. The statutes were implemented state wide, but this study concentrates on the Fourth Judicial Circuit. The Fourth Judicial Circuit in Northeast Florida consists of Duval, Clay, and Nassau Counties. The legislation examined requires individual schools to conduct an initial truancy intervention when a student has accumulated 5 unexcused absences in a calendar month or 10 unexcused absences in any 90-day period. An exploratory case study was conducted that consisted of interviews with school attendance social workers, data collection from the Truancy Arbitration Program run from the State Attorney's Office in each county, and state wide attendance data. An additional Program in the Duval County State Attorney's Office was also studied. Data for three school years, one before the new statutes and two after, were analyzed to see if the implementation of these statutes was successful. The study concludes that the implementation of these new statutes by the schools in the Fourth Judicial Circuit has been a failure. This research demonstrates that the schools are conducting a fraction of the required interventions to students in need and therefore other intervention programs have had a reduction in referrals since the initial intervention in not taking place. Finally, the research also discovered that there seems to be a bias in the handling of truant females, already well documented in other jurisdictions.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of Sociology

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of Sociology

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Sociology

This research examines possible contextual effects upon gender role attitudes in the United States related to women's employment outside ofthe household. The study included individual-level data, mother's previous work status and mother's educational attainment, not previously analyzed in a hierarchical linear model and state-level data not previously investigated, particularly state median household income. The primary analyses focus upon the contextual effects of state-level educational attainment and income. Analyzing General Social Survey data from 1994 to 2002, these contextual data were not found to have an effect upon the gender work role beliefs. In fact, none of the examined state-level variables were statistically significant in detecting contextual effects. These findings contradict earlier research, which found the proportion of religious fundamentalists within a state to have a contextual effect upon gender role attitudes.

This research explores the events and circumstances that lead to persistence and departure within the sociology master's program at Portland State University. It examines how individual and institutional characteristics interact and influence student decisions to dropout or continue in the master's program. It utilizes Vincent Tinto's (1993) theories of persistence and departure and his concepts of social and academic integration as they apply to sociology master's students. The purpose of the research was to describe how students became socially and academically integrated and how integration influenced patterns of persistence of departure. The aim also was to determine whether background variables such as undergraduate GPA, cumulative master's GPA, enrollment status, and career and educational goals influenced student outcomes.

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