Thesis (M.A. (Psychology)) --University of Limpopo, 2009 / Conceptions of epilepsy were studied using Q-methodology. The study was conducted at the University of Limpopo (Turfloop Campus) and the surrounding communities. The aim was to examine perceptions of epilepsy among different categories of people and to explore and differentiate between these categories’ individual construction of what epilepsy is. Thirty three participants were recruited for the study. They included medical professionals (doctors and nurses), traditional and spiritual healers, university students (consisting of both health sciences and non-health sciences students), two ethnic groups (namely, the Bapedi and Vhavenda), people who are from both rural and urban areas, and high school teachers. Each category was represented by three people. Participants sorted thirty six statements developed from interviews. Four factors emerged from the analysis, and were labeled as medical perceptions of epilepsy, equality of treatment for epileptics, traditionalist perceptions of epilepsy, and religious beliefs of epilepsy. These factors are discussed. / National Research Foundation

In the literature, researchers have shown that although people tend to express their positive attitudes toward people with disabilities (PWD), their internal reference about PWD is still based on a negative image about disability. Particularly, some scholars have noted that individuals without disabilities have both explicit favorable and implicit unfavorable attitudes toward PWD. Meanwhile, other scholars have commented that although negative implicit attitudes toward PWD are resistant to change, the expressions of such attitudes have become more insidious than before. Such phenomena are called microaggressions and have been explored from the perspective of PWD. However, there is no research currently designed to understand how people without disabilities perceive disability-related microaggressions. The purpose of this study was to apply Q-methodology to investigate perceptions of college students without disabilities regarding microaggressions toward PWD. This study also explored differences in these perceptions in terms of students' close contact experience with PWD, as well as their gender. The research questions include: (1) "How many perceptions are there when college students without disabilities check statements of disability-related microaggressions?" (2) "What are those perceptions?" (3) "Does gender differentiate perceptions of college students without disabilities when they check statements of disability-related microaggressions?" and (4) "Do close contact experiences with PWD differentiate perceptions of college students without disabilities when they check statements of disability-related microaggressions?" This study mainly analyzed 18 participants' data through Q-analysis, qualitative content analysis, and split-plot comparison. The results showed that three unique perceptions existed when participants perceived microaggressions toward PWD. The first perception disclosed participants' support of fact-oriented understanding of PWD (especially individuals who were blind or in a wheelchair), as well as their opposition to inequality toward PWD. The second perception revealed participants' good intention concerning help and strength of PWD (especially individuals who were blind or in a wheelchair), and their disagreement with inequality toward PWD. The third perception indicated participants' intention of helping PWD, assuming their helplessness, and disagreement with inequality toward PWD. Finally, participants' gender and close contact experience with PWD did not differentiate those perceptions. The discussion, limitations and implications of the study results will be presented.

Current school reforms under No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001) call for effective leadership from federal and state levels and across the school district from the superintendent to the school level to improve student learning. Part of the complexity of NCLB is greater superintendent accountability for increased student learning, which necessitates new conceptions of superintendent leadership behaviors.An unexplored area of educational research involves elementary principals' and superintendents' perceptions of superintendents' leadership behaviors and perceptions of superintendents' leadership behaviors for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) implementation. Additionally, an unexplored area of educational research is the comparison of elementary principals' perceptions of superintendent leadership behaviors with superintendents' self-reported leadership behaviors. The purpose of this study was to examine principals' and superintendents' perceptions of superintendents' leadership behaviors for DIBELS implementation.This mixed methods comparative case study used Q-methodology, and principals' and superintendents' interviews. Field observations and document analysis enriched the descriptions and understandings of superintendent leadership in this study.Findings indicated superintendents set defensible directions and influenced principals to implement DIBELS. Superintendents provided a leadership support network for principals comprised of mid-level district administrators. The relationships in this network, coupled with supports and resources in the network, gave principals access to social capital for DIBELS implementation.

Recently Alan Andreasen (2003) argued that social marketing is in the 'growth phase' of development following four decades of research and practice. During this same time period, marketing has also witnessed new theoretical ideas and practices that have evolved from the influence of new interactive technologies such as the internet. Only limited scholarly work however has been undertaken to draw these marketing sub-disciplinary areas together. The research undertaken in this thesis bridges this gap and explores the role of the internet as means to further extend social marketing theory and practice. Three research questions informed the study. The first of these questions focused on how internet users describe their experiences of the internet as an everyday technology. The second question investigated the different profiles of internet users' opinions, attitudes and actions, and the third question examined how social marketing can be more responsive to internet user behaviour. To address these research questions the research design used both qualitative methods of focus groups and in-depth interviews together with Q methodology to quantitatively represent the structure and form of individual users' subjective disposition towards the internet. Although Q methodology is relatively absent from marketing literature, it was a useful method for identifying types of people with similar experiences and views of the advantages and disadvantages of internet interactions and relationships. The research process in the study was operationalised using a three-study design. The first study drew on sixteen interviews and two focus groups with internet users, the second study involved Q sorting with thirty-two internet users, and the third study engaged interviews with twenty social change agents. This study of internet users is embedded in a particular theoretical and epistemological position. Three issues are relevant. First, a social constructionist epistemology is engaged. This emphasises that technology is a social process, patterned by the condition of its creation and use, and informed by human choices and actions. Second, the research is situated across disciplinary boundaries. Marketing practitioners initially adopted a commercial, albeit simplistic, lens when considering the value of social aspects, such as virtual communities and the social networks of connection that link internet users into longer term relationships and exchanges of knowledge, emotion and shared confidences online. However, the intangible non-material resources shared between customers, organisations and other users online are of import to understanding the value of the internet for social marketing strategy. This required looking beyond the social marketing theory and research, to the literature on the sociology of technology. The third way in which this research is different epistemologically and theoretically is in its interpretive focus. Accordingly, the thesis contributes to the shift in academic focus towards critical marketing, which Hastings and Saren (2003) argue provides a more detailed critique and understanding of social marketing processes and outcomes. The main contribution of this thesis is the development of a strategy map for online social marketing. The map is derived from findings from the three studies. Study 1 explained that the internet is a social and personal technology which has been incorporated into users' everyday lives and activities. Study 2 identified different profiles of internet user opinions, attitudes and actions and interpreted these as internet user segments described as: the Internet Communitarian, the Information Networker and the Individualised Networker. Study 3 delineated the findings from the downstream users' perspective and presented a strategy map derived from the experiences of upstream internet users. Three principles inform this strategy map. First, social marketers need to adopt customer-centric marketing. Secondly, they should apply an exchange continuum that embraces a relational perspective. Thirdly, social marketers using the internet should plan online strategies that focus on the internet as a recombinant technology that can be "remade" by individual users' needs and desires. Several identified limitations of the study should be considered when reviewing this study. Firstly, the study's interpretive methodological focus precludes quantification and generalisablity to larger populations. Secondly, sample bias in terms of age and gender demographics was evident. Thirdly, a further limitation of the study is the nature of the technology under investigation in this thesis: the recency, and hence the salience of the findings, are mitigated by the fact that the internet is a dynamic technology. Finally, the generalised rather than particularised perspective on social issues and problems adopted in this study as a means of discussing social marketing, may also be seen as a limitation. This research is of significance to both an academic and practitioner audience. In terms of scholarly significance, the study is important theoretically and methodologically. Social marketing theory has a well established view of the customer as an operand resource. This thesis is significant as it demonstrates the need to conceptualise customers as more than simply 'targets' of social marketing campaigns. It illustrates how social change customers become operant resources who produce effects, based on their sharing behaviours, and make online contributions to behaviour-change processes that give target audiences (operand resources) a sense that they can enact the behaviour. As well, the evolving customer roles -- user, social actor, co-creator, resource -- theorised from the study findings inform a shifting exchange continuum involving 'transactions' to 'relationships'. Finally, this research is of theoretical significance in elucidating the conceptualisation of the continuous-process perspective which reveals that exchanges are not just the discrete, 'transactional' variety, but rather are long in duration and reflect an ongoing relationship-development process. Methodologically, the study has also demonstrated the potential value of Q methodology as a means of revealing subjective experiences and perspectives, which are the foundation of social products regularly dealt with by social marketers. For social marketing practitioners the study also demonstrates the need for engaging a more holistic view of the internet and its customers to facilitate social change campaigns. This, however, does not negate the fact that there may be potential challenges and unintended consequences facing social marketers in engaging the internet.

This study focuses on policy makers and the intricacies and subtleties surrounding the relationship between policy formulation and policy implementation. However in this process, an important stakeholder in the teaching-learning situation has been overlooked – the teacher. It would seem as if policy makers assumed that by placing computers in school, all would bode well and the implementation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) would unfold naturally. Present educational practice has culminated in a mismatch between what is desired by school administrators, as policy makers and what is needed by teachers as policy implementers. As such, many institutions should promote a consensus approach as a means of producing policy that is representative of the principal policy implementers. This paper focuses on an innovative approach to the formulation of an ICT policy for a school, using Q-methodology case study. The purpose of this project was to access teachers’ perceptions, beliefs and attitudes on issues they consider as pertinent in the formulation of an ICT policy. The findings of this study indicate that although unique ‘groups’ of teachers were identified, a consensus approach could now be established to negotiate the formulation of an ICT policy that will be inclusive of all teachers irrespective of their preconceived mindsets. / Dissertation (MEd (Computer Assisted Education))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

Aims. Understandings of recovery in borderline personality disorder are limited. Research has suggested that people with borderline personality disorder may not identify with some general mental health recovery principals. It is also not clear if there are differences in perceptions of recovery between people with borderline personality disorder and staff members. The study set out to explore and understand perceptions of recovery in borderline personality disorder and identify which factors are most important. Design and Method. A Q methodology design was used, incorporating 58 statements on recovery that participants were required to sort, in order of how important they felt they were to recovery. An opportunity sample (N= 22) was recruited, consisting of 6 people with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and 16 staff members, from various services within the North West of England. Results. Principal component factor analysis with a varimax rotation revealed three factors, representing distinct viewpoints from 19 participants. The dominant viewpoint placed importance on reducing features and symptoms specific to borderline personality disorder. The second viewpoint was concerned with universal, humanistic recovery principals and the third viewpoint saw relationships, both with the self and with others as most important to recovery. Conclusions. Views on recovery in personality disorder are similar to general mental health recovery principals but there also may be recovery views which are more specific to the borderline personality disorder diagnosis. Areas for further research include the extent to which recovery is a transdiagnostic concept and the extent to which recovery values are influenced by therapy models and service requirements.

This study explores food image creation as an integral aspect of food styling as a profession. Q-methodology, with its five steps, guided this study. At the outset, the qualitative part of the research, interviews with South African food stylists provided guidance to develop the concourse. Food magazine readers examined a set of six selected images and matched each of them against six aesthetic indicators, also indicating their subsequent behavioural intent. For this process the Q-sort method was applied in which a predetermined sample of the readership of two of South Africa‟s most eminent food magazines was involved. It is a reliable psychometric technique based on photographs that is often used in non-food related contexts such as architecture and the travel industry. Quantitatively, the data was factor analysed, from which seven factors emerged that corroborated the results. Findings confirm that Q-sort is a useful research approach for non-verbal communication in settings where, through food images, the technical and artistic messaging of food stylists comes from manipulating the assembly of food image content. It is proposed that, through non-verbal communication, food stylists who are able to purposefully create food images for print media would be able to effectively influence consumers in such a way as to bring about changed behavioural intent and eventual purchasing. Further investigation could consider expanding the theoretical base from which food stylists could pursue ways to alter consumers‟ behavioural intent. Put into practice, the findings could be a guide for food stylists when compiling food images that would successfully communicate intended messages. / Dissertation (MConsumer Science)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / gm2014 / Consumer Science / unrestricted

The purpose of the following study is to provide advertisers with a better understanding of how Internet, television, and print media influence the perceptions of an advertisement and how those perceptions can influence purchasing behavior. This study uses Q Methodology, a methodology used to measure attitudes and beliefs. Three distinct groups emerged from the data labeled the Avoiders, the Traditionalists, and the Actives. Avoiders sought to bypass advertising, Traditionalists showed a liking toward traditional forms of advertising, and Actives were neither seeking out nor abstaining from viewing advertising. All three groups showed distrust toward Internet advertising.

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