My thesis discusses whether culture can be used to predict visual design preferences in documentation and whether cultures with similar attributes demonstrate similar visual design preferences. The visual design of a document is an important element in effective communication to an audience. If the audience is outside the United States, it is important to understand the attributes of that culture to create documents that are most effective for the audience. Cultural theorist Geert Hofstede describes cultural attributes in terms of six cultural dimensions: individualism versus collectivism, high versus low power distance, high versus low uncertainty avoidance, masculinity versus femininity, long-term versus short-term orientation, and indulgence versus restraint. This thesis explores whether we can identify visual design preferences in high uncertainty avoidance cultures and high power distance cultures, such as Spain and Latin American countries. To explore this topic, a study was done on sample report documents from a single company which operates in the United States, Latin America and Spain. Choosing only one company to collect samples from provided a way of discounting different corporate cultures as an influence on standards, tools and how documents are developed. As a framework for comparison of the documents, Kostelnick's visual design matrix was used to analyze the documents for graphics, data displays, document unifiers, decoding devices, and cuing devices. The results show that some elements of visual design can be predicted by cultural attribute, and there is a correlation between different cultures and their preference for similar design elements. iv For U.S. technical communicators working on documents for Latin American and Spanish audiences, documents need to be shorter in length with simple data displays and need to use more cuing devices to be effective for audiences in these cultures. This study also shows that for technical communicators designing documents for audiences in other cultures, studying the audience and the specific attributes of that culture will provide direction on how to design an effective technical document for that audience.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-03T18:35:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dulciane_Alves_Luczkiewicz.pdf: 1466208 bytes, checksum: 50c6d7ca5e70b801f461de01e4c4b189 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-18 / The objective of this study was to analyze, considering the brazilian cultural diversity, if there is a statistically meaningful difference in the level of moral development of Accounting students from different universities. The study was based on Kohlberg's moral development Theory, which presents three stages of moral development: pre-conventional (stages 1 and 2), conventional (stages 3 and 4) and post-conventional (stages 5 and 6), and on Hofstede's Culture Theory, which presents the following dimensions: power distance, collectivism versus individualism, femininity versus masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation versus short term orientation. The results were obtained through a descriptive analysis, ANOVA test, equality of proportion test, Pearson's correlation, confidence interval for average and p-value. The variables related to moral development, age, gender, religion and professional experience did not present statistically meaningful difference in the regions surveyed, what did not occur with the variable education, which proved to be a strong and consistent variable when compared to moral development. This study also aimed to verify if Hofstede's cultural dimensions presented significance between the studied regions. Difference was found in the following dimensions: power distance, individualism and long-term orientation. It is also possible to observe that the p index of moral development presents a statistically meaningful relation with the regions. Another important find in this study is that there is no statistically meaningful relation between the p index of moral development and the cultural values among the students that participated in this research in the regions surveyed. / Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo analisar, considerando-se as diversidades culturais do Brasil, se h?? diferen??a estatisticamente significativa em rela????o ao n??vel de desenvolvimento moral dos estudantes de gradua????o de Ci??ncias Cont??beis de diferentes Institui????es de Ensino Superior. Para tanto, utilizou-se como base a Teoria do desenvolvimento moral de Kohlberg, que postula em sua teoria tr??s n??veis de desenvolvimento moral: o pr??-convencional (est??gios 1 e 2), o convencional (est??gios 3 e 4) e o p??s-convencional (est??gios 5 e 6), e a Teoria da Cultura de Hofstede, que est?? definida nas seguintes dimens??es: dist??ncia do poder, coletivismo versus individualismo, feminilidade versus masculinidade, controle da incerteza e orienta????o de longo prazo versus curto prazo. Os resultados foram obtidos atrav??s de an??lise descritiva, teste ANOVA, teste de igualdade de propor????es, correla????o de Pearson, intervalo de confian??a para m??dia e p-valor. As vari??veis relacionadas com o Desenvolvimento Moral, idade, g??nero, religi??o e experi??ncia profissional, n??o tiveram diferen??as estatisticamente significativas nas regi??es pesquisadas, diferentemente da vari??vel educa????o, que comprovou ser uma vari??vel forte e consistente quando comparada com o desenvolvimento moral. Buscou-se ainda verificar se as dimens??es culturais de Hofstede tinham ou n??o signific??ncia entre as regi??es pesquisadas. Constatou-se diferen??a nas dimens??es dist??ncia do poder, individualismo e orienta????o a longo prazo. Nota-se ainda que o ??ndice p do desenvolvimento moral possui rela????o estatisticamente significante entre as regi??es. Outro achado importante nesta pesquisa foi que n??o h?? rela????o estatisticamente significativa entre o ??ndice p do desenvolvimento moral com os valores culturais entre os estudantes das regi??es pesquisadas.