Financial elder abuse is gaining increasing attention from researchers and policy makers. Such abuse can include theft of money as well as misuse of assets such as property. This research applied judgement analysis methodology to explore professional decision making in the context of such abuse and to identify the nature of the cues used to detect and prevent abuse. Participants included social care, health and banking professionals, who were established as key decision makers. In Phase I, semi-structured interviews (n = 63) were conducted. The critical incident technique was used to identify cue use and decisions taken in the most recent case experienced. Key cues for both social care and health professionals included the nature of the 'financial problem suspected', the older persons 'mental capacity' and the 'identifier of the abuse', this being whether the abuse was directly observed or instead reported by a third party. A separate cue used by health professionals was the individual's 'physical capacity'. Banking professionals did not use physical or mental capacity as cues, but independently considered 'who was in charge of the money'. Decisions made by social care professionals included determining whether safeguarding procedures should be implemented. In Phase II, a factorial survey approach was applied whereby social care, health and banking professionals (n=223) were presented with case scenarios incorporating the cues from Phase I in addition to cues from literature review. Multiple regression analysis and incremental F-tests identified the cues that explained a significant amount of the variance in judgements of certainty of abuse and likelihood of taking action. For example, for social care and health professionals this included the older person's mental capacity, and the nature of the financial problem suspected. The findings could be used to develop a training tool to enable other professionals to improve their strategies for detection and prevention of financial elder abuse.

Companies increasingly believe that sponsorship, and in particular sport sponsorship, can help them achieve their respective strategic objectives. Achieving sales objectives are especially important in the context of sport sponsorship, given that managers are under increasing pressure to justify their sponsorship expenditure, and that over two-thirds of all sponsorships are directed towards sports properties. However, isolating a sponsorship s contribution to a company s sales figures is difficult to accomplish, and even if this were possible, understanding the mechanisms behind consumers behavioural responses to that respective sponsorship would still constitute a challenge. Hence, understanding consumers behavioural purchase intentions, and what drives these intentions within sponsorship contexts, is of paramount importance. That said, little is known about what drives consumers purchase intentions in sponsorship settings. A greater understanding of consumers behavioural intentions within concurrent sponsorship settings is necessary. Concurrent sponsorships involve multiple brands sponsoring a property at the same time. As such, they are a more realistic and common sponsorship context than simple sponsor-sponsee dyads are. It is important to examine concurrent sponsorships because a collective is formed when multiple sponsors are involved. In turn, social psychology highlights that a collective is characterised by the degree to which its a priori members are perceived as a group. Groups are perceived qualitatively differently to dyads, and can also be perceived differently to the sum of their respective constituent parts. Moreover, the extent to which people perceive a collective as a group can impact upon their subsequent evaluations of that group and that group s actions. Consequently, consumers evaluations of a sponsee s concurrent sponsors and the sponsee itself may be affected by how concurrent sponsorships are perceived, which in turn may affect consumers behavioural intentions. Hence, it is imperative that concurrent sponsorship contexts are investigated. That said, there is scant literature investigating concurrent sponsorships, with sponsorship research historically focussing on sponsor-sponsee dyadic settings. This thesis contributes to our understanding of concurrent sponsorship settings of major sporting events by examining how people s perceptions of concurrent sponsors entitativity influence both their purchase intentions towards a focal concurrent sponsor and their sponsee equity evaluations. An online questionnaire, utilising sponsorship vignettes (scenarios) as part of a factorial survey design, was sent to respondents of a mid-sized UK-based university. Scenarios were used to manipulate respondents into perceiving two concurrent sponsorship settings: a concurrent official providers sponsorship setting and a concurrent official financers sponsorship setting. Hypotheses were tested through Lisrel 8.71 where confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM) were performed. The results in both sponsorship contexts (concurrent official providers and concurrent official financers ) appear to be very similar. Specifically, the results suggest that people s entitativity perceptions are positively related to their sponsee equity evaluations, which in turn are positively associated with people s purchase intentions. Entitativity is also positively associated with consumers intentions to purchase from a concurrent sponsor but only when consumers attribute high levels of sincerity towards that sponsor. The one significant difference between the two sponsorship types (official providers and official financers) in the study concerns how sincerity affects the entitativity-sponsee equity relationship. People s attributions of sincerity moderate the relationship between entitativity and sponsee equity in the official provider concurrent sponsorship context, such that the entitativity-sponsee equity relationship becomes stronger. However, people s attributions of sponsor sincerity do not affect the entitativity-sponsee equity relationship in the official financer concurrent sponsorship context. A post-hoc examination of repondents entitativity ratings also suggests people perceive official providers as being significantly more entitative than they do official financers. This study makes a number of contributions to both theory and management practice. For example, the study demonstrates how the entitativity concept, found within social psychology, can be applied to concurrent sponsorship settings, such that people s behavioural intentions towards a sponsee and a concurrent sponsor, are influenced by their concurrent sponsor entitativity perceptions. Following this, concurrent sponsors and sponsee rights holders should consider how sponsors can foster people s entitativity perceptions whilst at the same time communicate sincere motives for their respective sponsee sponsorships, as sincerity perceptions are important too. This would not only help the sponsee s rights holder by increasing sponsee equity but the results also suggest that people are more likely to purchase from a concurrent sponsor. That said, this may lead to further difficulties between sponsors and sponsees rights holders. For example, sponsees rights holders may be perceived as needing sponsorships as opposed to being able to command them, which in turn could lead to difficult sponsorship negotiations between rights holders and potential sponsors. Second, the business and marketing acumens of sponsees rights holders are generally regarded to be lower than that of sponsors . In fact, sponsors often act independently of sponsees rights holders when making sponsorship leveraging decisions and investments, and this is partly because sponsees rights holders are not proactive enough in working with the sponsors. Therefore, if sponsees rights holders do not have the capabilities to help sponsors foster entitative and sincere sponsorship contexts, sponsors may be unwilling to renew their sponsorship deals or even set up their own events.

This study examined whether the disproportionality of African American children referred to special education is influenced by the level of implicit racial bias among teachers, using the aversive racism theory. Data were collected from teachers of kindergarten through sixth grade in the Iowa City Community School District through email recruitment. Using a factorial survey design, teachers evaluated five vignettes, each with five questions mirroring the referral process to special education, an implicit and explicit racial bias measure, and demographics. Of the 307 teachers emailed, only 21 completed the full survey. The small sample size hindered the analysis due to violations of two of the major assumptions of linear regression: normality and constant variance. Due to these violations, only limited interpretations can be concluded from the linear models. A logistic regression was also completed on the referral for special education dependent variable and yielded the following significant results: The teachers who scored high on the explicit racism measure were more likely to refer a child to a special education assessment and other results revealed associations between certain characteristics and behaviors of the children and their likelihood of referral. The majority of teachers in the sample (67%) scored high in implicit racial bias but none of the models indicates a relationship between the child's race and referral to special education. The study suggests there is some connection between implicit racial bias and referrals to special education but not due to race. However, the complexity of relationships among these and other factors in both interpersonal relationships and classroom dynamics makes it necessary to further investigate this question and potentially remedy the problem of disproportionality in special education.