Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2000. Graduate Programme in Political Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 464-485). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ67908.

Thesis (M.P.H.)--University of Michigan, 1946.

Thesis (M.S.P.H.)--University of Michigan, 1940.

Thesis (M.P.H.)--University of Michigan, 1946.

Thesis (M.S.P.H.)--University of Michigan, 1940.

<p> The purpose of this grant project was to obtain funding for a prevention and intervention program that provides services to youth that are at-risk or have been victims of dating violence. The goal of the project is to provide education, resources, prevention and intervention services for these teenagers in hopes of improving their future relationships. Mental Health &amp; Addiction Services for Adolescents (MASA) Youth Services, a project of the California Hispanic Commission on Alcohol &amp; Drug Abuse, Inc. (CHCADA) was selected as the servicing agency for this project. </p><p> An extensive literature review was conducted to examine the need for implementation of a dating violence program. The information gathered and the literature guided the grant writer to develop a grant that will meet the need for the selected population.</p>

This research examined the role of communication – and in particular public relations (PR) and public affairs activities – in the decision-making processes around the proposal to build a bypass road around the city of Aberdeen. The study focused on the relative power of various discourses embodied in the arguments and strategies pursued by the promoters and opponents of the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Road (AWPR) to affect eventual outcomes. The research sought to revisit theoretical accounts of democratic decision-making as conceptualised by Habermas (1984) in the deliberations of the public sphere, and Foucault (1970) on the role of discourse in structuring civil debates. In his classic study of New Haven, Dahl (2005) found empirical evidence to support a pluralist paradigm. Yet in Flyvbjerg’s (1998a) study of urban planning in Aalborg, Denmark, Lukes’s theories on the second dimension of power and a Foucauldian conceptualistion of power were found to have more acute explanatory power. These major theories have been applied tentatively to the field of public relations by Burkart (2009) who advocates for the utility of a consensus-oriented approach to public relations (COPR). Motion and Leitch (2009) theorise that discourse analysis provides important analytic tools for PR practitioners. This research used the AWPR issue as a case study spanning four key decision-making phases from 2004 to 2012. These stages include representations to the Scottish Parliament; a public local inquiry (PLI); judicial review to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, and a hearing in the UK Supreme Court. The research drew upon triangulated methodologies including Fairclough’s (2012) political discourse analysis; observations at public meetings; and semi-structured interviews The research found that whilst both sides promoted a range of established discourses and PR strategies, the relative power of these discourses and the implementation of the strategies was determining. Political discourse analysis of key texts from the pivotal post PLI phase of the case study provided evidence of the dominance of discourses around economic development and community over weaker environmental discourses. Save Camphill’s campaign was more effective due in large part to the calibre of the professional public relations advice retained. Road Sense used public relations strategies in the early phases of their campaign but the implementation of these activities tended to be tactical, partial or counter-productive. Road Sense focused resources on a legislative strategy which largely eschewed any further attempt to engage with government, community and media stakeholders. The route of judicial review was unsuccessful due to a combination of second dimension power factors, including the reluctance of the UK courts to intervene in planning issues despite the existence of European directives to protect the environment. The AWPR case study concluded that examples of decision-making, as demonstrated by Save Camphill’s success in altering the route, confirm the existence of both the public sphere and pluralism in action. Yet, following Lukes (2005) and Flyvbjerg (1998a), there is equally evidence of a second dimension power variable which yielded more plausible explanatory accounts of the decision-making in favour of the Scheme at the PLI, and subsequently in the Courts. The case study also finds that a Foucauldian interpretation of discourse is required to fully appreciate the weakness of the environmental agenda at the local level especially when pitted against prevailing discourses of economic growth and the popularity of the contemporary car culture. Against this background, Road Sense’s PR strategies were secondary to their ultimate legislative strategy and lacked the requisite consistency on goal alignment and relationship building in lobbying and media relations. For campaigns to be effectual, public relations professionals must audit the power of prevailing discourses as theorised by Motion and Leitch (2009) before Burkart’s consensus-oriented public relations (COPR) approach can realise pluralist outcomes consistent with deliberative democracy.

This thesis is about public relations as an occupation and a business. The study is focused on investigating the nature of the expertise utilised in public relations, ways in which it is exploited commercially, and the consequences such practices have for the occupational group and its economic existence. The theoretical framework for this thesis combines insights from the sociology of the professions, studies of cultural/creative professions, Bourdieu's approach to the study of cultural practices, and critical examination of professional services, such as management consultancy. In empirical terms, the thesis combines a range of data and analytical approaches. The key part of the thesis is a model of public relations expertise derived from an analysis of participant observation of professional training. Its component parts are identified as: picture of the world; conceptual frame; and working knowledge, which in turn is composed of problems, tools and truths. The thesis also offers a narrative analysis of competition case studies, a particular genre of practitionars accounts of their own work, leading to the conclusion that their role is to show practitioners how to make sense of the immediate experience of work within a more abstract and ordered professional framework. A range of secondary data on the industry and the labour force are reanalysed to show how expertise is transformed into a commodity that can be priced and sold. The transformation involves an understanding of demand and supply dynamics for PR services. Finally, through the analysis of routine practices, the thesis draws attention to the occupation's &quot;split personality&quot; - two coexisting yet contradictory ways in which practitioners think about public relations - and pursues it at the level of the group's strategies designed to counteract the weaknessess resulting from this unsettled identity.

The main focus of this study was to investigate the relationship between the dependent variables of affective, continuance, and normative commitment and job satisfaction, job characteristics, role characteristics, and selected demographic variables. This study also aimed to make a comparison between police officers and first and mid-level supervisors of the Turkish National Police in order to test whether there was a difference between their commitment levels. The final purpose was to examine the moderating role of growth need strength (GNS) and the mediating role of overall job satisfaction between the five job characteristics and three components of organizational commitment. A total of 1,429 police officers and police supervisors were obtained and selected from various departments. An electronic survey was used to gather data from the target population. Eighteen hypotheses were developed and tested through various statistical analyses. The results revealed that role conflict and role ambiguity were inversely related to affective commitment. A positive significant relationship existed between affective commitment and tenure, task significance, autonomy, and intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction. The relationship between continuance commitment and education, autonomy, and role conflict were significant. Number of children, task significance, role ambiguity, intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction all made significant contributions to the variance in normative commitment. There was a significant difference in the level of affective, continuance, and normative commitment between police officers and mid-level supervisors and between first level supervisors and police officers. Overall job satisfaction was found to be a mediator between all five job characteristics and affective and normative commitment. Finally, GNS was a moderator between task identity and affective commitment, skill variety and continuance commitment, and job characteristics of autonomy and job feedback and normative commitment. On the whole, findings of this study revealed important theoretical, policy, and practical implications. Through an examination of the various aspects of organizational commitment and an in-depth investigation of the relationships between specific variables to components of organizational commitment, this study help researchers understand all aspects of organizational commitment from the perspective of police officers and police supervisors.

For years African Americans have comprised the largest minority group within the federal civil service, yet have been under represented at the higher levels, namely, GS13 through GS15 and the senior executive service (SES). Executive and legislative actions alone have not been sufficient to overcome the under-representation of African Americans at higher levels of the federal bureaucracy. The theory of representative bureaucracy suggests that passive representation, or the extent to which a bureaucracy employs people of diverse social backgrounds, leads to active representation, or the pursuit of policies reflecting the interests and desires of those people (Kingsley, 1944). Implicit in this definition is the expectation that minority administrators, specifically African American senior administrators, would have an interest in increasing their representation at higher decision-making levels within the bureaucracy. This research utilized quantitative analysis to examine 48 federal agencies in five four-year increments to determine how much senior level African Americans contributed to African American increases at mid levels of the federal bureaucracy. Further, this research utilized qualitative analysis in the form of standardized structured interviews to determine to what extent African American senior administrators believed that it was important to increase the representation of African Americans at higher levels. The results of the quantitative analysis suggests that African Americans at the highest levels (GS15 and SES) of the federal bureaucracy have exerted a positive influence on the overall change in the percentage of African Americans at the mid level (GS13 and GS14) over time. Further, the results indicate that of all the independent variables tested, African Americans at the senior level were the most significant contributors to the positive change in the percentage of African Americans at the mid level, after a four-year period. The influence of African Americans at senior levels was significant only in agencies where African Americans at mid levels were already below the mean for African Americans within the federal civil service. This finding suggest that African Americans at the highest levels take an active approach to representative bureaucracy when there is inequity for African Americans at mid-level positions in their agency.