The present research was based on a social learning theory framework. A domain-specific model was used to determine if there were relationships between self-efficacy, locus of control, and self-perceived risk-taking/task-persistence. / The following instruments were administered to third- and fifth-grade subjects: Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale (Nowicki & Strickland, 1973); Locus of Control Scale for Children's Perceptions of Social Interactions (Dahlquist & Ottinger, 1983); Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire (Crandall, Katkovsky, & Crandall, 1965); Perceived Competence Scale for Children (Harter, 1979); Risk-Taking Scale for Children; and Task-Persistence Scale for Children. / A pilot study was conducted to establish the psychometric properties of the two newly developed instruments. Internal consistency was assessed by coefficient alpha and was acceptable for Risk-Taking but below acceptable levels for Task-Persistence. One-week test-retest scores for the two instruments were considered to be satisfactory. Based on the test-retest results, a decision was made to proceed with both risk-taking and task-persistence as the dependent variables. / A series of 2 x 2 factorial analyses of variance indicated that there were no significant interactions between grade and gender. However, main effects were found: fifth-grade males perceived themselves as more risk-taking and more task-persisting than their younger counterparts. / Some support for the hypotheses was found: specifically, a significant relationship between perceived competence and self-perceived risk-taking/task-persistence at grade five. Few correlations were found between self-perceived risk-taking/task-persistence and locus of control. Therefore, any possible relationship between beliefs about causality and self-perceived risk-taking/task-persistence was refuted. / Multiple regression analyses assessed the joint influence of the independent variables in the prediction of self-perceived risk-taking/task-persistence. However, this resulted in no improvement in prediction of the dependent variable. / Since this study provided only partial support for selected aspects of social learning theory, it is recommended that the topic be further explored. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-01, Section: A, page: 0105. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

The purpose of this research was to explore resource management of unemployed women. Specifically, the study examined the relationship between earner status and changes in household consumption expenditures as they relate to interaction with the primary support network. Food and energy were the two categories selected for assessing changes in household consumption spending. The family was viewed from an ecosystems perspective in which the managerial subsystem functions as a regulator of resource exchange. / The sample was a subsample of a data set of families experiencing unemployment in Louisiana during 1985 and 1986. There were a total of 216 women who returned the Effects of Unemployment questionnaire. Three scales were selected for analysis: two subscales of the Consumption Cutbacks Scale and the Scope of Assistance Scale. / Analysis of the data revealed a positive relationship between seeking assistance and receiving assistance from the primary support network. Single-earner women were more likely to seek assistance than women who were not the sole earner. Sources of support were defined as parents, relatives other than parents, friends, and spouse's parents. Types of support were emotional, informational, and financial. Neither source nor type of assistance was related to the number of earners in the family. Reductions in expenditures for food and energy were more likely to occur in single-earner households than in multiple-earner families. Consistent with previous research, parents were the most common source of support. Emotional support was more often received than financial or informational support. / Future investigation of women's experiences with unemployment should be directed toward efforts to extend understanding of the resource network. Examination of types of assistance sought in conjunction with types received would provide a more complete picture of the interaction process. Further attention could be given to changes in household expenditures as a function of earner status. Theoretically, further elaboration of the management model is needed through study of the managerial subsystem and the personal subsystem functioning as complementary components of the family system. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-05, Section: A, page: 1133. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1987.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 30-03, Section: B, page: 1226. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1968.

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on December 22, 2009). Thesis advisor: Dr. Amanda Hinnant. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 1984. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 528-544).

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Improved stoves have been promoted in the global South by international organisations from the North since the 1970s for a variety of reasons including mitigation of health and environmental hazards related to the widespread use of solid biomass for cooking. However, uptake of these stoves by poor households in the South remains low, bearing negatively on efforts to alleviate energy poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This thesis examines the framing and impact of participatory and market-based approaches to stove development and dissemination which have been widely promoted since the mid-1980s to address the failures of the predominantly expert-led, subsidy-based models favoured in the early years. Specifically, I investigate and compare two Northern-led stove projects, one established by Project Gaia in Nigeria, where stove development efforts targeted at addressing energy poverty have been limited, and the second by Practical Action in Kenya, where such efforts are more visible. Drawing on empirical data gathered from field observations, interviews and key documents, I argue that despite the rhetorical shift from expert-led to context-responsive approaches, engagement with local priorities is still limited, and the interests and priorities of Northern organisations continue to shape the stove development agenda. The research establishes that Project Gaia’s CleanCook project in Nigeria remains an expert-led intervention that fails to connect with the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid while seeking to create local market conditions for transferring stove technology. In Kenya, Practical Action has been more responsive to local realities in its efforts to engage marginalised women’s groups in participatory stove development; however, success is limited by the constraints of project funding and assumptions about homogeneity of the poor. Cultural preferences and socio-economic differences within Southern target populations challenge the Northern vision of improving stove dissemination through a combination of participatory methods and neoliberal market solutions.

Early in the life of this thesis, Britain became the world's third largest consumer of organic produce with sales of organic food exceeding one billion pounds. Drawing on a conceptual framework based on Foucault's texts, the research investigates this little word "organic" and asks how organic food production is regulated. The empirical study begins with a genealogy/archaeology of organic farming regulation, including very recent history in the making during the research period. Using Foucault's concepts of code- and ethics-oriented morality and focusing on self-regulation, the study considers commitment to organic farming by producers as ethical subjects. An ethnography carried out within a self-managing cooperative organic farming community shifts the research to a local level. The research investigates the various organic truths produced by individuals through subjectivisation-objectivisation interplay. The code-oriented morality of the Soil Association is an absent presence that is at variance with a looser set of values and rules associated with the self-sufficiency movement and handed down as an oral tradition. Within a heterogeneity of organic, the care of the self practice parrhesia is used to analyse how community members establish collective organic farming practices through decision-making practices. The research uncovers the hidden complexities and ambiguities embedded in organic food production. The thesis reveals too how power relations are at play within the context of equality in a headless organisation. The thesis addresses the under-researched area of agriculture within business schools. Moreover, the thesis provides a comprehensive and accessible working example of Foucault's main themes and contributes to an emerging body of work based on the interplay of subjectivisation and objectivisation. Finally, the thesis contributes an empirical study of self-management to the emerging research field within Critical Management Studies of alternative organisational forms.

No description available.

This dissertation is the result of ethnographic fieldwork in eastern Slovakia in the village of Kojsov during the year of 1993. The goal of the dissertation is to examine issues of the household economy in light of the "transition from communism to capitalism". At the level of the household differences between consumption and production can be revealed and reaction to opportunities from the 1989 Velvet Revolution are made lucid. Household composition, production, and consumption form the basis for the second part of this dissertation. I point out how individuals consume significantly less, produce more in kitchen gardens, and endure the financial stress of economic change. Of prime importance during this period of transition is the process of decollectivization and reprivatization of land in rural Slovakia. This process is the focus of the third and final section of the dissertation. Villagers in Kojsov are extremely slow to reprivatize their family lands. This behavior is tied to a village ethos of egalitarianism, an antipathy for stratification, and overall lack of capital necessary to take the risks integral to entrepreneurial activity. Thus both ideology and limited finances determine the fate of Kojsov's land. This dissertation is a case study which examines contemporary issues surrounding peasants, the moral economy, the "transition" to capitalism and entrepreneurship.