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Recreational organizations that deliver activities to youth within their communities can provide an effective setting for positive youth development (PYD) endeavours due to being fun, engaging, and an environment where skill-building is inherent. However, not all recreational organizations offering PYD aimed programs are successful and many are cancelled after a short amount of time. A framework or guide for (1) promoting PYD through community recreation and (2) evaluating and identifying PYD outcomes does not yet exist. This research seeks to develop a model to inform recreational program design to bring about positive developmental outcomes in youth participants using empirical data collected from three successful organizations. Both one-on-one interviews and a focus group with youth participants and adult staff were utilized following a qualitative multiple case study approach. Data collected was concerned with the positive developmental outcomes experienced by youth participants in the organizations and mechanisms used to realize these outcomes. The key themes, derived through inductive and deductive analyses, are presented as a five-step logic model. These themes help identify the intended results of programs along with the resources and processes needed to achieve these results, thus making this study’s findings easy to integrate into recreational programming. The model’s process factors included a series of inputs (i.e., contextual factors and external assets) and activities (i.e., direct and indirect strategies). Findings identified as intended PYD outcomes included outputs (i.e., objective measurable indicators), short-term outcomes (i.e., life skills), and long-term impacts (i.e., the four Cs including life skill transfer and contribution). This study elaborates on concepts identified in previous research that are conducive to PYD while bringing them together into a framework for designing recreational programs with the goal of promoting positive developmental outcomes in youth. However, further testing through quantitative, longitudinal, and intervention research may be needed.

The benefits of undergraduate student research are vast and have been well documented by the literature (Lopatto, 2003, 2010; O’Donnell, Botelho, Brown, Gonzalez, & Head, 2015; Russell, Hancock, & McCullough, 2007) despite barriers that have withstood the test of time (Wayment & Dickson, 2008). The current workshop will be led by a faculty-student duo, both with extensive experience in undergraduate research. Using evidence-based research, presenters will provide an overview of the benefits and barriers to undergraduate research and will present a logic model used for successful faculty-student collaboration. An interactive component of this workshop will prompt audience members to construct personal logic models to specifically explore their goals and feasibility in undergraduate research programming.

In the railway industry (like other industries), safety awareness campaigns are conducted as intervention programmes for providing educational programmes to change the attitudes and behaviours of the general public that interact with the railway environment. Such educational intervention programmes are ideally achieved by following pedagogical principles that ensure programme quality. However, it seems that even with the use of safety awareness campaigns, the desired safety behaviour among the general public in the railway environment is not yet established. The purpose of this research study was to understand how the Railway Safety Regulator (RSR) – as the custodian of railway safety in South Africa – plans, designs and implements its safety awareness campaigns as an educative process to combat railway-related occurrences involving the general public. As an exploratory study, the researcher applied the industry standard logic model framework (LMF) to guide the process of the investigation and utilised an interpretivist lens to understand the context of the phenomenon investigated. Following a qualitative programme evaluation research approach, a safety awareness campaign was studied as a single case study to understand how the RSR plans and develops their safety awareness campaigns. Six purposively selected RSR employees participated in the study, providing qualitative data through semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The findings of the study conclude that the Regulator’s current practice of conducting awareness campaigns does not reflect an educative process, hence helping to explain why the envisaged change in public behaviour is not attained. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Humanities Education / MEd / Unrestricted

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This thesis examines two approaches to Galois correspondences in formal logic. A standard result of classical first-order model theory is the observation that models of L-theories with a weak form of elimination of imaginaries hold a correspondence between their substructures and automorphism groups defined on them. This work applies the resultant framework to explore the practical consequences of a model-theoretic Galois theory with respect to certain first-order L-theories. The framework is also used to motivate an examination of its underlying model-theoretic foundations. The model-theoretic Galois theory of pure fields and valued fields is compared to the algebraic Galois theory of pure and valued fields to point out differences that may hold between them. The framework of this logical Galois correspondence is also applied to the theory of pseudoexponentiation to obtain a sketch of the Galois theory of exponential fields, where the fixed substructure of the complex pseudoexponential field B is an exponential field with the field Qrab as its algebraic subfield. This work obtains a partial exponential analogue to the Kronecker-Weber theorem by describing the pure field-theoretic abelian extensions of Qrab, expanding upon work in the twelfth of Hilbert’s problems. This result is then used to determine some of the model-theoretic abelian extensions of the fixed substructure of B. This work also incorporates the principles required of this model-theoretic framework in order to develop a model theory over substructural logics which is capable of expressing this Galois correspondence. A formal semantics is developed for quantified predicate substructural logics based on algebraic models for their propositional or nonquantified fragments. This semantics is then used to develop substructural forms of standard results in classical first-order model theory. This work then uses this substructural model theory to demonstrate the Galois correspondence that substructural first-order theories can carry in certain situations.

The study aims to identify the influence of socioeconomic factors on the prevalence of type 2 diabetes for individuals aged 27 and older in the Republic of Belarus. We analyze data from the Diabetes Survey conducted by the Endocrinology Medical Center in Minsk and the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Belarus from 2011 to 2015. The association between socioeconomic factors and the prevalence of type 2 diabetes is examined using logistic regression with sequential adjustments for clinical and behavioral predictors. Our findings indicate that individuals with lower income and educational levels are more likely to suffer from type 2 diabetes than those in higher income and education groups. Moreover, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes decreases as income and educational level go up. Furthermore, this association remains significant even after further adjusting for various behavioral and clinical factors. In addition, we confirm that type 2 diabetes is more prevalent among overweight / obese, physically inactive and older individuals. These findings suggest that strategies for preventive diabetes programs should be focused on socioeconomic environment rather than on individual risky behavior only.

Academic computing is one major component of Information Technology infrastructure affecting the availability and utilization of technologies at universities. The study here evaluated two different colleges at the University of Oregon in comparison to a minimal logic model proposed here, the Support for Academic Computing Model (SAC). Based on the differences in IT needs and implementation of existing instructional technology services, the evaluation investigated the utility of the logic model and information regarding the two settings. The two colleges are the College of Education (COE) and the School of Architecture and Allied Arts (AAA). My hypothesis is that empirical evaluation studies based on a comparison with a base logic model for infrastructure needs across contexts may help to provide information to better align resources. Results show that a strong use case of 100% of faculty interviewed at COE rely on Learning Management Systems (LMSs), Data Visualization and Video & Audio tools, making them a core part of the SAC model. Most faculty interviewed in AAA utilize LMSs at 89%, then Productivity/Content Creation/Research Tools at 83%, and as an extension Instructional Media Tools at 46%, which helps to validate the SAC model across this second context. Other information in the model evaluation allows more specific comparisons of gaps in areas such as access to resources, knowledge of and about resources, mission-driven need for resources, and some patterns. Common themes that emerged from the faculty interviews are the need to showcase technology usage among colleagues, that services are not always well advertised, that technology may not be accessible or that there may be issues regarding limited or unclear funding for both support and resources that limits their use. This indicates that this style of a model might be helpful in planning and evaluating academic computing support programs and services. Future work would be needed to investigate the degree to which intervening according to the findings of such a model might be efficacious to improve the perceived quality of services or the usage patterns and outcomes, as well as the degree to which such a model could be generalized and evolve over time.

This thesis has sought to examine the conceptualisation(s) of the field of Olympic education identified in the English language literature, and to evaluate the planning of Olympic education in practice, specifically in relation to the preparation of Olympic education programmes and systems for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. When Pierre de Coubertin introduced the modern Olympic Games, one of the ideas for the revival of the Games was to educate young people through sport. Despite Coubertin s educational philosophy, the Olympic Games have long failed to represent ideals of fair play, equal opportunity, and international harmony but being replaced by bribery, corruption, commercialism, drug use and gender discrimination instead. The IOC has strengthened the roles and mission of the Olympic bodies in particular relation to the promotion of Olympic values and Olympism through the implementation of Olympic education. As a policy aim for the Olympic Movement, the development of Olympic education programmes has become a key goal for the IOC and thus host cities/nations. Providing a concept of Olympic and Paralympic education programmes in preparation for staging the Olympic Games is a compulsory requirement for host cities and nations. However, in spite of the IOC s recent explicit and intended commitment to the development of Olympic education policies in practice, explanation of Olympic education as a concept and a set of practices is imprecise and relatively underdeveloped in the Olympic related area. In addition, there is a lack of understanding of how universal values and concepts of Olympic education are perceived and communicated in culturally diverse contexts. The thesis is divided into two related parts, which seeks to provide two fundamental contributions to knowledge in this field. Part One is focused on a meta-narrative review of the English language literature on Olympic education. The methodology of a meta-narrative review is an extension of the systematic review process and facilitates the identification of the contribution of research traditions to the phenomena under review, in this case the conceptualisation and operationalisation of Olympic education. Through the process of meta-narrative review, six research traditions were identified: educational philosophy; critical sociology; curriculum development; education psychology; development of evaluation measures; and policy analysis and evaluation. II The results of the review identified how Olympic education has been conceptualised with various unfolding storylines in different research traditions, and this analysis subsequently provided the basis for the second key element of the study in the form of templates against which to evaluate the Olympic education programmes and systems associated with Tokyo 2020. Part Two employs a case study approach and is focused on the analysis of six cases using a realist evaluation methodology, employing analytic logic models and analysis of Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) configurations. This facilitates the development of explicit and/or implicit causal claims about changes brought about by Japanese Olympic education programmes. The research has also contributed to developing a critical review of Olympic education programmes in a culturally specific, non-western context. Provision of Olympic education, within the context of national legislation requiring its introduction into the school curriculum developed by various stakeholders, represents a unique and culturally specific context for its study. Not only its education system, but also the cultural and historical values embedded within Japanese Olympic education programmes derive from the Japanese understanding of Olympism and universal Olympic values based on the Japanese values such as harmony, in particular applied in the effort in the recovery from national disasters, moral values learned from Judo and physical education, and Japanese ways of expressing hospitality. Thus, this case study of Tokyo 2020 acts as an exemplar in the diffusing of ways of developing and delivering the benefits of Olympic education programmes in culturally specific context.

A lack of evaluation and evidence of effectiveness prompted this study of the Distributed Common Ground System's (DCGS) proficiency maintenance tool, Ready Intelligence Program (RIP). The goal was to close the gap between research and practice and inform stakeholders at the local Distributed Ground Station (DGS) of evaluation results. Guided by a logic model as the theoretical foundation, this study examined how proficiency is perceived by DCGS crewmembers because of RIP at a military installation with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. This qualitative study used an outcomes-based program evaluation report based on interviews with 5 crewmembers, observations of program participant activities, and reviews of training documents and program reports. Data were transcribed into NVivo 10 for organization, and inductive code words and categories were applied. Data interpretations were confirmed via triangulation and then sent to the participants for member-checking. An external evaluator reviewed the study's methodology, data, and findings for veracity. The project that resulted from the study was a program evaluation report that identified 4 overarching themes. It was concluded that (a) there was a lack of awareness of RIP, (b) RIP had minimal impact on perception of proficiency, (c) the program was occasionally applied ineffectively, and (d) management of the program was insufficient. It is recommended that existing RIP training be emphasized to crewmembers to increase awareness. Additionally, an ongoing program evaluation is recommended with a quantitative measure of proficiency achievement. This study promotes social change by improving attitudes toward positional proficiency and RIP as a maintenance tool, improving program maintenance, and facilitating regular program evaluations.