No description available.

No description available.

Cabala is a small, rural village of mestizo and indigena people in the Ecuadorian Andes. Since the local haciendas were disbanded in 1962 the economy and population of the village have both declined and the remaining villagers have increased their engagement in the money economy. Nevertheless most contemporary villagers were suspicious of urban Ecuador which they perceived as being organised exclusively according to trade transactions and saw themselves as belonging to a distinct moral community characterised by participation in exchange relations. Cabalano society was largely ordered according to the logic of a 'good faith economy' and any breach of the obligations inherent in exchange relations threatened not just the relationships between participants but the social order of the whole village. Transgressions of the social order were minimised by the stress most villagers placed on the correct performance of social roles and the maintenance of personal reputations. Thus the social and political order of the village was weighted towards conservatism and I describe how awareness of public scrutiny of their behaviour influenced how most villagers behaved towards members of their own household, managed their responses to the world and treated illness. At the same time, however, many villagers were able to manipulate public opinion, at least sometimes, and were able to both initiate, and adapt to, changes in the social order. Furthermore increased engagement in the money economy suggests that villagers were aware they could choose to order their social relations according to a different logic but chose not to. In the conclusion to the work, therefore, I argue that most villagers made an active choice to stress the importance of exchange relations in order to resist the perceived anomie of the modern, Ecuadorian state.

This study examined the attitudes and perceptions of resident assistants towardgay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) students. Attitudes and perceptions of floor environments, hall environments, and the campus community were looked at. The original intent of this study was to find a relationship between resident assistants' attitudes and perceptions toward GLBT individuals and its relationship to the environment created on the RA's floor. The sample of GLBT students was too small to make reference to it in this study.A significant difference was found between hall staffs' attitudes. The study suggests that their hall environment can influence RAs' attitudes and perceptions. Consistent with past research, male resident assistants (RAs) had more negative views toward gay men and lesbians than female RAs. Inconsistent responses were found to individual questions, which suggests a lack of education on GLBT issues. The majority of RAs believed there should not be more GLBT material integrated in the classroom, however they felt they didn't have adequate training on GLBT issues. RAs felt that GLBT students experience less harassment and discrimination in the residence halls then on campus and in society. / Department of Secondary, Higher, and Foundations of Education

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

This study determines opinions of two Indiana communities concerning the proposed Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge. Surveys were mailed to residents of Pike County and Noblesville, Indiana. The response rate was 38%. Differences in attitudes were measured between residents of the two areas regarding ten issues of concern. The issues respondents were most concerned with were those focusing on the loss of county tax base, road closings and access, and a possible increase in the mosquito population. Surprisingly, the issues concerning avian diseases and land acquisition/ condemnation were not major concerns. It was originally thought that these issues of employment and property would have been of primary concern to respondents. Residents of Pike County in the affected refuge area were more aware of the refuge and the issues of concern. However, of the respondents who were aware of the refuge in both Pike county and Noblesville, few differences in their perceptions of the issues were noted. / Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management

The present study examined the psychometric properties of a new instrument, the Multidimensional Attitude Toward Older Adults Scale (MATOAS), administered to a total of 787 undergraduate students at a Midwestern university. Factor structure of the MATOAS was investigated with a split-sampling approach in order to cross validate the findings between exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). EFA suggested a four-factor structure with 25 items. These factors were named Respect and Appreciation (R-A), Irritation and Intolerance (I-I), Work Interests (W-I), and Social Connectedness (S-C). The results of CFA testing of the higher-order four-factor model showed significant improvement in various fit indices from the previously tested tripartite attitudes model (Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960) and the uni-dimensional model.The MATOAS demonstrated fairly high internal consistency reliability (α = .88) and high test-retest reliability over a one week period (r =.89, p < .001). Convergent validity of the MATOAS with the refined version of the Aging Semantic Differential Scale (Polizzi & Millikin, 2002) and divergent validity with the 13-item Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (Reynolds, 1982) also were promising. The present study provides extensive reviews of the Kogan Attitudes Toward Old People scale (Kogan, 1961 a) and the Aging Semantic Differential (Rosencranz & McNeivin, 1969) as well as established and contemporary guidelines for scale development work. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

Counselor supervision has been examined in many ways; from the angle of the supervisor, the supervisee, and the supervisory dyad. An area that has not been researched as solidly is that of the effect of supervisor race and gender on White trainees' perceptions of supervision. The present study was designed to examine those variables. The independent variables included supervisor race (Black female or White female), trainee gender, and trainees' levels of White racial identity. Dependent variables included perceptions of supervisor expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness, and supportive supervisory behavior and evaluative supervisory behavior scores on the Expectations for Supervisor Behaviors Questionnaire. The expectation was that supervisor race, trainee gender, and trainee's level of White racial identity would serve as predictors of perceptions of supervisors and their behaviors.Participants were 50 Caucasian masters level counseling and counselor education students at two Midwestern universities who volunteered for the study. Caucasian female research assistants were utilized to collect the data. Trainees were provided with one of two biographical sketches describing a hypothetical female supervisor; the information in each sketch was identical except for race (Black female or White female). Trainees then listened to a short audiotape of a simulatedsupervision session. Finally, they completed the following surveys: the Supervisor Rating Form (short version), Expectations of Supervisor Behaviors questionnaire, the White Racial Identity Scale, and an author-generated demographic sheet.A canonical correlation was performed to answer the major hypotheses of this study. The results indicated that supervisor race and two subscales of White racial identity, Disintegration and Autonomy, were significant predictors of perceptions of supervisor attractiveness and evaluative supervisory behaviors. Of five canonical roots calculated, this was the only one that was significant.A oneway MANOVA was also computed to test the significance of the supervisor race. The results indicated that the Black supervisor received higher scores on both the supportive and evaluative supervisory behavior subscales than did the White supervisor. Finally, only two other trends were noted. First, female trainees scored both supervisors significantly higher than did male trainees on perceived expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. Second, male trainees scored the Black supervisor significantly lower than the White supervisor on perceived expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness.The significance of these findings for research and practice, and the limitations of the present study are discussed in the last chapter of this dissertation.60 / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

Since their inception, public schools had been faced with inert problems. The purpose of this study was to discover what the American public believed were the biggest problems facing public schools from 1990-1999 and what education experts believed could be done to eliminate or lessen the problems. Data to discover what the public believed were the biggest problems facing public schools were derived from the Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Polls of the Public's Attitudes Toward Public Schools (Poll) for that 10-year period. Possible solutions to those problems were examined and discussed based on the latest literature on identified topics.Based on the Poll data the public identified 46 problems facing public schools for this 10-year period. A group of 35 individuals sorted the 46 public school problems into categories they believed were similar with each other and these groupings were factor analyzed to determine coherent problem categories.The results of the factor analysis provided a list 16 problem areas for the 10-year (1990-1999) period as being the most prevalent. Potential solutions to these 16 problems were offered from four different areas: the schools, government, community and individual homes of the students. Some solutions to a particular problem were also mentioned as potential solutions to many of the other problems facing public schools.Suggestions for further study include replicating this study at the local level, analyzing each problem more thoroughly, and conducting further study of the factor analysis. / Department of Educational Leadership

The success of on-line review websites has led to an overwhelming number of on-line consumer reviews. These reviews have become an important tool for consumers when making a decision to purchase a product. This growth has led to the need for applications that enable this information to be presented in a way that is meaningful. These applications often rely on domain specific semantic lexicons which are both expensive and time consuming to make. The following thesis proposes an unsupervised approach for product aspect discovery in on-line consumer reviews. We apply a two step hierarchical clustering process in which we first cluster based on the semantic similarity of the contexts of terms and then on the similarity of the hypernyms of the cluster members. The method also includes a process for assigning class labels to each of the clusters. Finally an experiment showing how the proposed methods can be used to measure aspect based sentiment is performed. The methods proposed in this thesis are evaluated on a set of 157,865 reviews from a major commercial website and found that the two-step clustering process increases cluster F-scores over a single round of clustering. Finally, the proposed methods are compared to a state of the art topic modelling approach by Titov and McDonald (2008).