This thesis is primarily an analysis of two unstructured questions from a mail questionnaire sent, in 1956, to adopters in Quebec, Ontario, New York, Ohio and California. The method we have used is that of content analysis which is described in another section of this introduction. [...]

This study shows how social workers reason about the concepts of gender, gender roles and equality and if these arguments reinforce heteronormativity that could affect the ability of same-sex couples to adopt children. The reasoning regarding equality indicates a difference between heterosexual couples and same-sex couples. What emerges in the study is that the social workers reasoning can be explained with that they have been imbued by heteronormativity. Heteronormativity becomes a contributing part of how same-sex couples are seen in the adoption process. Arguments for equality, which erase stereotypes, do not apply in the same way for same-sex couples as for heterosexual couples. Regarding same-sex couples the equality is based on stereotyped gender roles that reinforce the heteronormativity. This implies a paradox between arguments for equality, which reinforce heteronormativity, and the possibility for same-sex couples to adopt children.

A variety of movements and social pressure have driven the need for an increase in environmental awareness, and subsequently fuels the need for individuals to reduce their ecological footprint. Firms are now trying to implement 'eco-friendly' technologies that both build and run their products. How these 'eco-friendly' products will perform in the market is strongly tied to a variety of consumer related influences and decisions, as well as personality type. This thesis presents a model of varied social influence on consumer markets. First we show how varied playing characteristics amongst opponents in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma yields a different distribution of strategies. Utilizing two variations of IPD, we map scores to edges based on the agents involved in each edge as one construct of influence. Other types of influence include a homogeneous influence, and a zero influence for comparison of results. We also introduce the Rate of Social Mobility as a basis for initializing random social movement in a network. We show that the social influence of the network in the consumer market plays a vital role in the dynamics of product adoption. In closing we discuss future model refinements, and advances.

Infertile heterosexual couples comprise the majority of those pursuing parenthood via adoption. While research into the experience of adoptive parenthood has focused on adoptive mothers and couples, the research on either group has not fully captured the experience of adoptive fathers. The present study was aimed at understanding how men perceive adoption, and its pursuit, following failed infertility treatment. Sixteen established and prospective adoptive fathers were recruited to participate in individual semi-structured interviews. Narrative analysis was used to evaluate the men’s meaning-making process related to fatherhood. The men told stories which indicated they both believed and countered western culture’s master narrative that fatherhood is constructed via genetic reproduction. I elaborate on the implications of these narratives for understanding the experience of adoptive fatherhood in specific, and fatherhood in general. Following this, recommendations are made for infertility treatment practitioners, adoption service providers, and future researchers based on these implications.

Transportation policy is playing an increasingly important role in the transition towards more fuel-efficient vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs). Whether the policy seeks to promote adoption through mandatory requirements or through monetary incentives, or to address issues related to adoption of AFVs, it is clear that such policies can have large-ranging impacts on the future of the US transportation system. The work I conduct in my dissertation seeks to understand these policies, in the past, present, and future. I evaluate the effects of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT) on the adoption of HEVs. As part of EPACT, a tax credit incentives program was implemented for consumers purchasing HEVs. Using a unique fixed effects regression approach with lagged instrumental variables, I am able to estimate the effects of the incentives. I find most significant responses occur when incentives exceed $1,000 in tax cd credit. Depending on the vehicle model the presence of EPACT yielded increases in sales of 5% to 15%. This increase is relatively smaller compared to many existing studies, which my work indicates is likely the result of over-attribution of sales to policy. I go on to examine the effects of the adoption of electric vehicles on funding for transportation infrastructure. A significant portion of revenue for transportation infrastructure comes from taxes on gasoline, these funds will likely be diminished to some extent as electric vehicles are adopted as they consume little to no gasoline as fuel. Using several existing electric vehicle models, I find that at the per-vehicle level, revenue generation can be upwards of 50% lower in certain states depending on how fees are charged. The total annual revenue generation at the federal level could decrease by as much as $200 million by 2025, though this is quite a small portion of total revenues for transportation infrastructure. I demonstrate that the revenue decrease can easily be made up through small policy fee changes in either flat fixed or through incremental increases in use fees, though implementation of such policies can be difficult politically. I also focus on the recent implementation of alternative fuel vehicle incentives in the 2009 update of the CAFE standards. I demonstrate that while the AFV incentives help spur the production and adoption of AFVs, there is a short-term emissions penalty due to the structure of the policy. i find that every AFV sold results in an increase in emissions rate for another vehicle of 50-400 grams of CO2 per mile, comparable to adding an additional conventional vehicle onto the road. The cumulative effect is an increase of 20 to 70 million metric tons of CO2 for vehicles sold between 2012 and 2025. I further extends this work by investigating how other policies promoting AFV sales interact with the CAFE policy. I focus specifically on the California ZEV mandate interaction and find that there is an increase of 120 million metric tons of CO2 for new cars sold between 2012 and 2025. The analysis also demonstrates a counter intuitive effect: the greater the success of ZEV in inducing adoption of AFVs, the greater the short-term emissions penalty due to the two policies. Finally I examines the response of driving behavior response to changes in gasoline prices. Using a unique dataset obtained from Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation, we are able to observe annual driving behavior at the individual vehicle level from 2000 through 2010. We observe heterogeneity of price elasticities using two methods: separating data by quantiles over the factors of interest and by interacting the factors of interest as categorical variables with gasoline prices. We find statistically significant variations in elasticities: for driving intensities we observe values of -0.172 increasing up to -0.0576 as the amount driven annually increases, for gasoline prices we observe a range of elasticities from -0.002 to -0.05 for prices below $4/gallon with a sudden increase to -0.182 for prices above $4/gallon, lastly for fuel economies we find that below 20 MPG elasticities are highest at -0.173 with decreasing responsiveness as vehicle fuel economy increases. Heterogeneity needs to be accounted for in order to properly understand policy effects: responses based on average elasticity values are likely to be incorrect.

Infertile heterosexual couples comprise the majority of those pursuing parenthood via adoption. While research into the experience of adoptive parenthood has focused on adoptive mothers and couples, the research on either group has not fully captured the experience of adoptive fathers. The present study was aimed at understanding how men perceive adoption, and its pursuit, following failed infertility treatment. Sixteen established and prospective adoptive fathers were recruited to participate in individual semi-structured interviews. Narrative analysis was used to evaluate the men’s meaning-making process related to fatherhood. The men told stories which indicated they both believed and countered western culture’s master narrative that fatherhood is constructed via genetic reproduction. I elaborate on the implications of these narratives for understanding the experience of adoptive fatherhood in specific, and fatherhood in general. Following this, recommendations are made for infertility treatment practitioners, adoption service providers, and future researchers based on these implications.

Transracial adoption continues to be a widely debated and controversial subject matter. The purpose of this study was to complete an examination of what adoption social workers do to teach adoptive parents regarding their adoptees' differing cultural and ethnic background. A questionnaire was sent to all adoption social workers employed by Children's Aid Societies in Ontario; 90 responded. The questionnaire included questions regarding demographic information, opinions of transracial adoption and also explored the actual actions taken to teach adoptive parents about their adoptees' differing cultural and ethnic background. Findings were that the majority of adoption social workers in Ontario are Caucasian, and that they have a high level of agreement with the appropriateness of transracial adoptions. The total actions taken by social workers to educate adoptive parents were found to be quite low; a higher number of actions taken was associated with: (1) The social workers being older; (2) The fact that they adopted transracially themselves; (3) Longer experience in social work, and specifically in adoption; (4) More transracial adoptions facilitated.

Between 1960 and 1975 more than 38,000 mothers lost babies to adoption in New South Wales, Australia, a pattern which was replicated in other Western societies. Various theories were proposed for women's exnuptial pregnancies which resulted in their babies being taken for adoption, culminating in the discursive construction of the unmarried mother as 'mad, bad, or stupid'. Until the 1990s, the voices of women whose babies had been taken for adoption had been silenced by the social order which adoption practices served. It is through their voices, and through the voices of other women who remember the era of the adoption bounty, that another meaning for the loss of a baby to adoption, through the process of semanalysis, has been sought. This thesis is informed primarily by the writings of the French postmodern feminist, Julia Kristeva. In addition the works of the post-structuralist philosopher, Michel Foucault, the German socialist feminist, Frigga Haug, and the American feminist psychologist, Michelle Fine are used as an heuristic lens through which to examine the phenomenon of losing a baby to adoption. A qualitative research methodology, incorporating feminist praxis and feminist multiple methods, has been employed. The framework for this thesis is that of a double helix which depicts two orders, the symbolic and the semiotic, which intertwine and intersect. The symbolic order is analogous to the public social order which through its hegemonic discourses constructed the unmarried mother and adoption. The semiotic order refers to the personal space where the voices of women are heard through counterdiscourses. At the scission of the two helical strands sits the thetic phase, a point of rupture by the semiotic into the symbolic where the voices of mothers are expressed through their poetry and art. Through the process of semanalysis, the tensions which simultaneously resist and challenge the semiotic and symbolic orders are exposed: tensions between discourse, discipline and docility; power and knowledge; sexuality and silence; power of / as sexuality; power and resistance; and resistance and / as silence. Furthermore, I examine the manifestations of mothers' resistance to silence, and their resistance as activism. My concluding analysis involves the notion of abjection as it binds together the threads of the loss of a baby to adoption: abjection as entrapment; abjection as infertility; and abjection as / in reunion. For mothers who lost babies to adoption, their loss finds meaning in the ultimate horror: it is abjection.

The adoption of e-learning technologies in campus universities has not realised its potential for meeting the learning needs and expectations of 21st century students. By modelling university learning and teaching as a complex adaptive system, this thesis develops a new way of understanding and managing the adoption of new learning technologies in campus universities. The literature on learning and teaching in higher education indicates that lecturers??? ability to innovate in their teaching is constrained by tacit and discipline-specific educational knowledge. Introducing new methods and technologies into mainstream university teaching requires explicit review of educational knowledge, and requires support from departmental and institutional organizational systems. Research on organizational change in other contexts, such as manufacturing industry, has used complex adaptive systems modelling to understand the systemic interdependence of individual strategies, organizations and technologies. These models suggest that the integration of new e-learning technologies into mainstream campus university teaching will involve corresponding change processes. Part of this change requires the linking up of diverse disciplinary perspectives on learning and teaching. The thesis develops a conceptual framework for researching university learning and teaching as a complex adaptive system that includes learning technologies, people, and their organization within a university. Complex adaptive systems theory suggests that the capacity of a campus university to adapt to new e-learning technologies will be reflected in patterns in the strategies of those lecturers who are early adopters of those technologies. A context-specific study in the University of New South Wales used cognitive mapping to represent and analyse the strategies of a group of 19 early adopters of e-learning technology. These early adopters were participants in a cross-discipline Fellowship programme intended to develop their ability to act as change agents within the university. Analysis of the maps gathered before and after the Fellowship, triangulated with data on the Fellows??? participation in organizational change, leads to a new way of modelling how university learning and teaching systems, including their technologies, adapt within a complex and changing higher education context.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.