The purpose of the study was to develop a scale to measure sexual orientation and to examine its psychometric properties. Previous scales were critically examined and compared and the need for a scale which simultaneously measures same and opposite sex responsiveness independently, and accounts for dynamic changes over time, while testing a number of overt and covert dimensions of sexual orientations, was established. A 48-item scale was designed to tap self-reported intensity and frequency of Emotional Attachment, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Attraction and Sexual Contact towards males and females in the Past, Present and Future. An initial study was conducted with 13 undergraduate university students of both genders, representing a variety of sexual orientations and nationalities, and qualitative feedback was obtained and utilized to make appropriate adjustments and refinements to the scale. The scale was then administered to 133 Rhodes University undergraduate psychology students to obtain quantitative data with regard to its internal structure. The scale was found to have a good internal consistency reliability Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.8106. Existing sub-scales had lower alpha coefficients. Factor analysis, a form of construct validation, was performed and four factors emerged. These had very good internal consistency reliability alpha coefficients: Sexual Responsiveness to Females (0.9894), Sexual Responsiveness to Males (0.9741), Emotional Attachment to Females (0.8403) and Emotional Attachment to Males (0.8372). These factors were further statistically analysed to ascertain how they relate to one another and to the demographics of gender, age, relational status and sexual orientation identity. Future research will need to assess other forms of reliability and validity and focus on larger and more varied samples.

The problem considered involved assessing willingness of educators to participate in a study offering monetary incentives. Determination of willingness was implemented by sending educators a packet requesting return of a postcard to indicate willingness to participate. The purpose was twofold: to determine the effect of a monetary incentive upon willingness of educators to participate in a research study, and to analyze implications for mail questionnaire studies. A sample of 600 educators was chosen from directories of eleven public schools in north Texas. It included equal numbers of male and female teachers and male and female administrators. Subjects were assigned to one of twelve groups. No two from a school were assigned to different levels of the inducement variable.

This Diploma Thesis deals with crime prevention, especially with psychological aspects of this interdisciplinary field. The content of this work is divided in two main sections, theoretical and research section. The theoretical section introduces basic concepts of crime prevention, criminogenic theory and the most important psychological aspects of criminality. The research section monitors 18 selected psychological criminogenic factors that are evaluated by respondents from the professional community according to the importance for the development of delinquent behavior and according to the possibility of their elimination by psychological instruments. Recommendations of psychological interventions suitable for the elimination of criminogenic factors and a personal experience in this field are attached by research respondents too. Summary of findings provides background for the use of psychological interventions in crime prevention practice.

Thesis (M.A. (Clinical Psychology)) --University of Limpopo, 2013 / The study is aimed at investigating societal perception towards the hearing impaired and their psychological implications. The study concentrated on how the hearing impaired thought the hearing public perceived them and, also identified the psychological implications of these (perceived) societal perceptions on the hearing impaired. The research design is qualitative in nature, wherein, a convenient and purposive sample of ten hearing-impaired participants was used. Video recorded interviews of open-ended questions and questionnaires were used in combination to gather information. The Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was applied as the method of data analysis. Three super-ordinate themes were identified. These themes primarily indicated that the hearing impaired hold the view that they are negatively perceived by the hearing society. The findings of the study were that negative societal perceptions result in negative self-perceptions and discourage social interactions between the hearing impaired and the hearing communities.

This dissertation presents the findings of a qualitative study on understanding the motivating factors underlying repeat attendance in market research studies and the ways in which repeat attendance participants are recruited to take part in such studies. The study was approached from an interpretivist paradigm, employing the self-determination theory and the theory of self-concept maintenance. Purposive sampling was applied. The data was collected by conducting eight semi-structured interviews with participants who had taken part in numerous market research studies. Through thematic analysis, sub themes were identified from the data, combined into second-level themes and grouped into the following three overarching themes: (1) participation motivation; (2) honesty/dishonesty; and (3) recruitment procedures. It was found that participants were not only motivated by extrinsic motivators such as incentives, but that intrinsic motivators were also present. Furthermore, a level of dishonesty was also evident, not only among the participants, but among the recruiters as well. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology with specialisation in Research Consultation)

Conditioning theory and research have contributed substantially to a more complete understanding of a variety of social processes including attitude formation, consumer behavior, and interpersonal attraction. The goal of this thesis was to illuminate further another frequently investigated social process, voting behavior.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study uses a rhetorical visual analysis to investigate supplement advertisements within the top three fitness magazines, according to circulation, to provide a richer understanding of the message construction within the visual images the advertisements contain. The advertisements were selected at random over a time span of a year and a half within each of the magazines, totaling nine separate advertisements for analysis. The purpose of this study is to determine to what extent, if any, the construction of advertisements in men's fitness magazines operates as ideographic images establishing legitimacy as determined through application of Sonja Foss' rhetorical visual analysis methodology. Previous research has identified various analyses of visual images within the fitness culture, however, rhetorical visual analysis of supplement advertisement does not appear to have been investigated prior to this project which is the primary concern for the initiation of the current research. Employing rhetorical analysis in order to understand visual images provides a perspective that is imperative to identification of elements and functions of visual images. The current findings indicate that images in advertisements in men's fitness magazines do not establish rhetorical legitimacy, as understood from a rhetorical perspective. However, when examined through a traditional aesthetic intentionalist perspective, the construction of the advertisements operates as ideographic images, establishing legitimacy through the image. This information provides us with the understanding that advertisements within current muscle magazines are operating under a traditional viewpoint, and as such, produce traditional perspectives. The advertisement industry within this genre is reliant upon the consumer first knowing what the product is and then realizing how the image fits into that function. The limitation within this perspective of the advertisement industry is the consumer's knowledge base concerning the product, the product being explained through text and the time the consumer is willing to spend on correlating the intent or function with the images presented.