The purpose of this study was to examine the social perceptions of young children with disabilities and young children of color. Further, an attempt was made to determine whether differential rates of acceptance were experienced by either group, or by the group of children who were of color and also had a disability within integrated classrooms. Young children (age 5.0 through 6.11) were studied in intact groups (N=120) from child care centers in the Texas counties of Denton and Dallas. Three measures of social perceptions were implemented: (a) a forced choice (multiple alternative) technique using dolls of a variety of ethnicities and ability statuses in which children must select dolls they feel represent a list of positive and negative attributes; (b) social distance theory as measured by children's artwork; (c) a sociometric rating. The results of this study showed significant areas (p< 05) of stereotype and bias in the perceptions of young children toward ethnicity, disability and gender. Implications for further research into the efficacy of multicultural and anti-bias education programs is recommended.

The purpose of this study was to assess rape attitudes and empathy levels of students at a university in North Texas. The Attitudes Toward Rape questionnaire and the Rape Empathy Scale were administered to 387 undergraduate students. Dependent variables were attitudes and empathy and independent variables were prior knowledge or experience as a rape victim, having female siblings, gender, marital status, and age. Significance was found between rape-intolerant attitudes and both prior experience as a victim (p < .001), and gender (p < .001). Significance was also found between empathy and experience as a rape victim (p < .035) and gender (p < .032).

The objectives of this dissertation were to: (1) discover whether commenters and non-commenters on an international marketing questionnaire differ based on sociodemographic, nationality, and personality characteristics; (2) determine whether commenters with greater life satisfaction are more likely to provide positive comments; (3) determine whether commenters differ in response styles due to their national background; and (4) discover whether commenters differ (based on sociodemo-graphic, nationality, and personality characteristics) in their propensity to comment on the design rather than on other questionnaire issues. An exploratory design was used to satisfy these objectives.

The opinions of individuals may be influenced by groups of different gender configurations. This influence was studied by asking college students to respond to a series of statements in pretest and post-test settings. Post-test settings included the use of manipulatively constructed confederate groups to influence the subjects' responses. A pretest was administered in an anonymous nonthreatening environment. Within a week, the subjects were post-tested in a setting with four "confederates" who had previously been instructed to unanimously voice opposite answers to the subjects' initial responses to pretest questions. The objective of this experiment was to determine the number of opinions that were changed when confronted with opposing views. Change of opinions between pretest and post-test were considered to be operational definitions of "conformity."

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

M.Com. / The South African apparel industry is growing tremendously with a sales value of R129.9 billion expected by 2019 (Marketline, 2015). This is due to the growth in the middle class, the increase in disposable income, and the fact that the South African economy is focused on technology, finance, and e-commerce (online shopping) (Marketline, 2013:2). Consumers are being exposed to various shopping channel options, both offline and online, which has been found to influence their purchase intention (Voinea & Filip, 2011:17). Retailers should therefore aim to understand how the offline and online shopping channels they offer are affecting consumers, and, in particular, they need to understand consumers’ reasons and motivation for selecting one channel over another. The literature on the subject has found that there are two main factors influencing shopping channel choice: shopping channel attributes – cost, time, convenience, and customer service – and perceived risk factors – delivery risk, product risk, and security risk (Al-Hawari & Mouakket, 2012:641; Lin & Sun, 2009:461; Martin & Camarero, 2008:629; Huang & Oppewal, 2006:347; van Dijk, Laing & Minocha, 2005:1). Thus, by understanding the two sets of factors influencing shopping channel choice, retailers will understand why consumers select one channel rather than another – which will allow retailers to design appropriate shopping channels for their goods. This will improve their efficiency and engagement as they will be offering consumers shopping channels that appeal to them...

Esta tese apresenta um modelo de relevância de opinião genérico e independente de domínio para usuários de Redes Sociais. O Social Opinion Relevance Model (SORM) é capaz de estimar a relevância de uma opinião com base em doze parâmetros distintos. Comparado com outros modelos, a principal característica que distingue o SORM é a sua capacidade para fornecer resultados personalizados de relevância de uma opinião, de acordo com o perfil da pessoa para a qual ela está sendo estimada. Devido à falta de corpus de relevância de opiniões capazes de testar corretamente o SORM, fez-se necessária a criação de um novo corpus chamado Social Opinion Relevance Corpus (SORC). Usando o SORC, foram realizados experimentos no domínio de jogos eletrônicos que ilustram a importância da personalização da relevância para alcançar melhores resultados, baseados em métricas típicas de Recuperação de Informação. Também foi realizado um teste de significância estatística que reforça e confirma as vantagens que o SORM oferece. / This thesis presents a generic and domain independent opinion relevance model for Social Network users. The Social Opinion Relevance Model (SORM) is able to estimate an opinions relevance based on twelve different parameters. Compared to other models, SORMs main distinction is its ability to provide customized results, according to whom the opinion relevance is being estimated for. Due to the lack of opinion relevance corpora that are able to properly test our model, we have created a new one called Social Opinion Relevance Corpus (SORC). Using SORC, we carried out some experiments on the Electronic Games domain that illustrate the importance of customizing opinion relevance in order to achieve better results, based on typical Information Retrieval metrics, such as NDCG, QMeasure and MAP. We also performed a statistical significance test that reinforces and corroborates the advantages that SORM offers.

La question initiale de cette étude est comment ont communiqué les candidats à l'élection présidentielle colombienne de 2014, à travers Twitter, et qui impose les agendas médiatiques et politiques? Cette question a été basée sur la construction de l’objectif de connaître l'utilisation que les candidats à l’élection présidentielle colombienne de 2014, ont fait de la plate-forme de communication Twitter. De là, trois objectifs spécifiques ont été fixés: 1) Connaître l’utilisation que les candidats à l'élection présidentielle de 2014 ont fait de Twitter; 2) Clarifier les questions sur lesquelles ont parlé et 3) Établir qui a imposé les agendas politiques et médiatiques. Et nous sommes partis de l’hypothèse que les candidats à l'élection présidentielle de 2014 (premier et deuxième tours) communiquent de manière unidirectionnelle à travers Twitter et que les agendas continuent à être construits par le gouvernement, les leaders d'opinion et les médias avec peu ou pas de participation des citoyens. Ce travail a été réalisé selon une méthodologie qualitative de la recherche sociale, dont le genre de recherche est appliqué avec une portée descriptive-interprétative mesurée par la cyber-ethnographie. À la fin de la recherche, l’hypothèse initiale a été confirmée et cela montre que les citoyens ont échoué à être entendus par les gouvernements, par les leaders d’opinion et par les médias à travers les réseaux sociaux. En fait, ce sont ces trois derniers qui imposent toujours leurs agendas. / The trigger question of this Thesis is: how did the Colombian presidential candidates in 2014th, communicate through Twitter, and who did imposed an agenda on it? In order to answer that, it was assumed as a starting point, the necessity to find out how the Colombian presidential candidates in 2014th, used the communication platform Twitter. From that on, there were defined three main objectives: 1) To determinate the kind of relationships that the candidates built up; 2) To make explicit the subjects which they talked about and 3) To established who did imposed the informative agenda. The assumption that the Colombian presidential candidates in 2014th (first and second round), communicate themselves on a unidirectional way through the communication platform Twitter, and the agendas remain been established by the government, the public opinion makers and the media with little or none citizens participation; it´s been taken as a starting point. Through a methodology within the qualitative paradigm from the social investigation, which type of investigation is applied with a descriptive-interpretative coverage, using as a method the Cyber-ethnography? At the end of the research Project, the initial assumption was uphold and it is clear how the citizens hadn´t been heard by the government, the public opinion makers and the media though the social networks. As a matter of fact, these three last ones are the ones that remain imposing the agendas.

Les études académiques récentes sur l'influence de l'opinion publique sur les interventions militaires dans les démocraties occidentales concluent pour la plupart que l’opposition du public n’a pas empêché le président de faire usage de la force. Ces études se concentrent souvent sur le choix d'intervenir dans un conflit donné et omettent d'analyser les ajustements apportés à l'intervention elle-même du fait de l'opinion publique. Cette étude tente au contraire de montrer qu'on ne peut comprendre l’influence de l'opinion publique si l'on se limite à la décision d'intervenir et n’étudie pas les décisions connexes liées à la conduite et à la réussite d'une intervention: le choix des moyens humains et financiers, les objectifs, la stratégie de communication. La littérature scientifique actuelle omet également de dévoiler la manière dont l'exécutif tente de gérer la contrainte de l'opinion publique et comprendre ainsi quelle est sa véritable marge de manœuvre vis-à-vis de celle-ci. En effet, l’opinion publique et la présidence s’influencent mutuellement : le président est souvent contraint de trouver un compromis entre les objectifs politiques et militaires désirés et ce que le public est prêt à accepter. En incluant l'impact de l'opinion publique sur la mise en œuvre des opérations militaires, cette recherche conclut que le public américain a eu une influence majeure sur le degré d'engagement, les objectifs et la durée des interventions militaires de l'après Guerre froide. Notre étude s’appuie principalement sur des entretiens avec des responsables politiques impliqués dans le processus décisionnel ayant conduit à l’usage de la force après la Guerre froide. Ce processus décisionnel sera analysé à travers cinq études de cas. / Recent qualitative studies of the relationship between public opinion and U.S. foreign policy put decisions into the following two categories: the President tends to lead or to follow public opinion; public opinion influences decision-making, constrains the decision, or has no impact. These studies typically research the initial decision to intervene, but fail to examine the subsequent decisions to sustain and win a war: financial and human means, conduct, objectives, duration, and communication. I argue that these elements of a winning strategy are impacted by concerns with public support at home. The impact of public opinion on the decision whether to use force is better understood when analyzing the compromise between the perception of anticipated public opinion and the necessities of a military campaign. Public opinion impacts the strategy, the timing, and length of an intervention, and inversely, those elements impact the anticipated public opinion and ultimately the decision to use force or choose a different course of action. The president can expect to influence public opinion and raise the acceptability of an intervention through various means. As a consequence, there is a back-and-forth process between anticipated public support for a given intervention and the consideration of the use of force. Contrary to the current literature, which tends to conclude that the president enjoys a substantial margin for maneuver, an analysis of post Cold War cases of interventions, limited interventions, and military escalations shows that anticipated public opinion limited the president's margin for maneuver and influenced not only the decision to intervene but also the military strategy and in the end, the result of the intervention. These findings contradict the realist paradigm for which only the structure of the international system matters and domestic politics are irrelevant in the study of international relations.

Shu Yin Man. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-75). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS / ABSTRACT / LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS / LIST OF TABLES / Chapter CHAPTER I --- INTRODUCTION / Chapter 1.0 --- Overview --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Background --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- The Research Objective --- p.4 / Chapter 1.3 --- The Conceptual Model --- p.4 / Chapter 1.4 --- Significance of This Study --- p.5 / Chapter 1.5 --- Outline of This Paper --- p.7 / Chapter CHAPTER II --- REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE / Chapter 2.0 --- Overview --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1 --- Review of Relevant Past Studies --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2 --- The Conceptual Framework --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- The more contemporary view of attitude model --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Rational appeals for reducing risk that consumers perceive --- p.12 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Emotional appeals for changing consumer's feelings towards an attitude object --- p.14 / Chapter 2.3 --- The Conceptual Model --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4 --- The Causal Relations Among Constructs and Hypothesis --- p.18 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- "The Causal Relations between Information, Feelings and Beliefs" --- p.18 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- "The Causal Relations between Feelings, Beliefs and Attitude towards the service performed by disabled service staff" --- p.20 / Chapter 2.4.3 --- The Causal Relations between Attitude towards the service performed by disabled service staff and the Intention to use such service --- p.22 / Chapter 2.4.4 --- The moderating effect of types of Job --- p.23 / Chapter 2.5 --- Summary --- p.25 / Chapter CHAPTER III --- RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY / Chapter 3.0 --- Overview --- p.26 / Chapter 3.1 --- The Research Design --- p.26 / Chapter 3.2 --- The Sample and Sampling Procedure --- p.27 / Chapter 3.3 --- Data Collection Procedures --- p.28 / Chapter 3.4 --- Manipulations --- p.30 / Chapter 3.5 --- Operationalization of Constructs --- p.31 / Chapter 3.6 --- Data Analysis --- p.34 / Chapter 3.6.1 --- Manipulation Checks --- p.34 / Chapter 3.6.2 --- MANOVA analysis --- p.35 / Chapter 3.6.3 --- MANOVA by Structural Equation Modeling --- p.36 / Chapter 3.7 --- Research Activities --- p.37 / Chapter 3.7.1 --- Focus Group Interview --- p.37 / Chapter 3.7.2 --- Pretest --- p.38 / Chapter 3.7.3 --- The Main Study --- p.39 / Chapter 3.8 --- Summary --- p.39 / Chapter CHAPTER IV --- ANALYSIS AND RESULTS / Chapter 4.0 --- Overview --- p.40 / Chapter 4.1 --- Manipulation Checks --- p.40 / Chapter 4.2 --- MANOVA analysis --- p.41 / Chapter 4.3 --- MANOVA by Structural Equation Modeling --- p.46 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- The Original Conceptual Model --- p.46 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Structural Equation Model Results --- p.49 / Chapter 4.3.3 --- The Modified Conceptual Model --- p.51 / Chapter 4.3.4 --- Structural Equation Model Results --- p.54 / Chapter 4.4 --- Discussion --- p.59 / Chapter 4.5 --- Summary --- p.60 / Chapter CHAPTER V --- CONCLUSION / Chapter 5.0 --- Overview --- p.61 / Chapter 5.1 --- Summary of the Research --- p.61 / Chapter 5.2 --- Contributions of the Study --- p.62 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Theoretical Contributions --- p.62 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Managerial Implications --- p.64 / Chapter 5.3 --- Limitations of the Study --- p.66 / Chapter 5.4 --- Directions for Future Research --- p.67 / Chapter 5.5 --- Summary --- p.68 / REFERENCE(S) --- p.70 / APPENDIX(ES) --- p.76