Academic achievement and educational expectations as a function of parental absence were examined among 268 newly immigrant elementary, middle, and high-school students from Spanish-speaking countries. Data collected as part of a longitudinal study of adaptation and achievement in newly immigrant students were analyzed. Participants had varying experiences with parental absence, in terms of length of absence, gender of absent parent, and reason for absence. Reasons for parental absence included parental divorce, parental death, and serial migration, a cause unique to immigrant children. Students who experienced parental absence reported lower educational expectations. Students who experienced the death of a parent had lower achievement scores and lower expectations than students who did not experience parental death. Prolonged absence was also important, with students who experienced parental absence for more than one year performing worse than students who had minimal parental separation. In addition, boys who experienced parental absence because of serial migration performed worse academically than boys who did not have this occurrence. Educational expectations were reduced among students who experienced parental absence as a result of the migratory process, especially for younger students. The extent to which parental absence related to achievement and expectations through potential mediating factors, such as economic hardship, perceived school support, and parental school involvement was assessed with structural equation modeling. Overall, the model was able to explain some of the relationship between parental absence and the academic achievement and educational expectations of immigrant students from Spanish-speaking countries.

Minimal empirical research using longitudinal data to explore integrative models of eating disorder development exists. The purpose of this study was to further explore multidimensional models incorporating parental attachment, history of stress, appraisal/coping processes, internalization of the thin-ideal, negative affect, body image, and eating disordered behavior using prospective, longitudinal data. The models were evaluated using 238 participants who completed an initial series of self-report questionnaires during their first semester in college and completed follow-up questionnaires 6 months and 18 months later. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships among the factors. Analyses confirmed that college freshman with insecure parental attachment relationships and those with a history of previous stressful experiences appraised the adjustment to college as more stressful and reported feeling less able to cope with the transition; these conditions predicted increased negative affect and increased eating disturbances. Women who reported experiencing negative affect and those that endorsed internalization of the thin-ideal also reported higher levels of body dissatisfaction; these women engaged in more disordered eating attitudes and behaviors. A second model investigating negative affect as mediating the relationship between the appraisal/coping process and eating disturbances also revealed that experiencing difficulties with the transition to college predicted later negative mood states. Further, women who reported increased negative affect also reported increased eating disturbances. Finally, cross-lagged and simultaneous effects between selected factors were evaluated. Results from these analyses are mixed, but they provide additional information about the predictive relationships among factors that play a role in the development of eating disorders. The results of this study provide valuable information about the development of eating disorders that can be used to aid prevention and treatment. Examination of these models in a large independent sample might provide confirmation of these relationships, and investigation of the models during different developmental periods might also provide important information about the development of eating disturbances and those individuals who are most at risk.

The stratification of bird species along elevational gradients is widely reported, with montane bird communities typically characterized by distinctive species occurring in relatively small and isolated populations; as such, these species are the subject of considerable interest to ecologists and conservationists. The stratification of species along elevation is largely attributed to compressed climatic zonation. Recent evidence that bird species are shifting up in elevation has fueled speculation that these species are tracking their climactic niches in response to climate change. However, there is also evidence plant communities are shifting in elevation, presenting a potential additional mechanism explaining changes observed in the bird community. Uncertainty as to the degree to which climate directly influences bird abundance versus the degree to which climate indirectly influences bird abundance via habitat composition and structure represents a key impediment to understanding the ecology of these species in montane environments. To address this question I measured species abundance, habitat characteristics, and temperature at 150 survey points located along 15 elevational transects in the Presidential Mountains of New Hampshire in the summers of 2014 and 2015. I used N-mixture models to correct for imperfect detection of species and structural equation models, incorporating abundance, habitat, temperature, and precipitation derived from a downscaled regional dataset to assign variation to the direct and indirect effects of climate upon birds. Analysis of 21 species revealed species-specific patterns on how climate exerts direct effects and indirect effects mediated by forest composition and structure on bird abundance. This work represents an important contribution to the ecological understanding of the pathways by which climate influences bird abundance. Finding that 62% of species experience both direct and indirect effects of climate, with 62% experiencing stronger direct than indirect effects, these results underscore the vulnerability of these species to climate change. With 81% of species found to experience indirect effects of climate via forests, these findings indicate great conservation value of maintaining forest habitat amidst climate change. Overall, this information will facilitate the refinement of predictive models of the abundance of montane bird species and represents an approach that will advance future investigations of climate effects in the Northern Appalachians and other systems.

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No description available.

Researchers are often interested in comparing brain activity between experimental contexts. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are a common electrophysiological measure of brain activity that is time-locked to an event (e.g., a stimulus presented to the participant). A variety of decomposition methods has been used for ERP data among them temporal exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Essentially, temporal EFA decomposes the ERP waveform into a set of latent factors where the factor loadings reflect the time courses of the latent factors, and the amplitudes are represented by the factor scores. An important methodological concern is to ensure the estimates of the condition effects are unbiased and the term variance misallocation has been introduced in reference to the case of biased estimates. The aim of the present thesis was to explore how exploratory factor analytic methods can be made less prone to variance misallocation. These efforts resulted in a series of three publications in which variance misallocation in EFA was described as a consequence of the properties of ERP data, ESEM was proposed as an extension of EFA that acknowledges the structure of ERP data sets, and regularized estimation was suggested as an alternative to simple structure rotation with desirable properties. The presence of multiple sources of (co-)variance, the factor scoring step, and high temporal overlap of the factors were identified as major causes of variance misallocation in EFA for ERP data. It was shown that ESEM is capable of separating the (co-)variance sources and that it avoids biases due to factor scoring. Further, regularized estimation was shown to be a suitable alternative for factor rotation that is able to recover factor loading patterns in which only a subset of the variables follow a simple structure. Based on these results, regSEMs and ESEMs with ERP-specific rotation have been proposed as promising extensions of the EFA approach that might be less prone to variance misallocation. Future research should provide a direct comparison of regSEM and ESEM, and conduct simulation studies with more physiologically motivated data generation algorithms.

This study investigates the changeability of transport-related attitudes and mode choice of early adolescents. Data on attitudes and travel behavior were collected in Austria and Germany in two consecutive survey waves with an interval of one year. The approach is based on a before-after control group experiment with an intervention promoting active travel modes. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior we used structural equation modeling analyzing effects of the intervention; the potential for behavioral changes was modelled as moderator variable between intention and behavior. Findings suggest that the intervention was effective in changing attitudes, perceived behavioral control (PBC) and intentions to use non-motorized travel modes more, and car less. Difference models show that changes of attitude, subjective norm, and PBC accounted for 29% (car passenger) to 92% (walking) of the variance in changes in intention. The changes in intentions are however weak predictors of changes in reported behavior.

Adolescence is an important developmental period where friendships become important for social emotional adjustment. Given the importance of friendships in adolescence, the current study explored the relation between popularity and internalizing problems and whether friendship qualities mediated this relation. The present study aimed to answer the following research question: What is the mediating role of friendship qualities in the relationship between perceived popularity and internalizing symptoms? Data from the National Institute of Child Health and Development – Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development were analyzed. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results indicate that adolescents who rated themselves as being high in popularity also reported higher levels of positive friendship qualities. A significant relationship was also found among perceived popularity and internalizing problems such that adolescents who rated themselves as being high in popularity were also reported by their mothers as having lower levels of internalizing problems. Contrary to what was expected, validation and caring significantly mediated the relationship between popularity and anxiety/depression and social problems such that as popularity goes up, so does anxiety/depression, and social problems. Results found conflict and betrayal mediates the relation between popularity and thought problems suggesting adolescents that believe they are popular experience less conflict and betrayal and fewer thought problems. Additionally, conflict resolution, companionship, and recreation each mediated the relationship between popularity and social problems. This suggests that having a friend you can rely on for companionship, recreation and conflict resolution serves as a buffer from the negative consequences of social problems. Help and guidance as a mediator resulted in a positive relation between popularity and social problems which was unexpected. Results support claims that popularity relates to having high quality friendships that protect against internalizing problems. These findings emphasize the importance of understanding outcomes for adolescent adjustment in relation to forming and maintaining positive relationships with peers.

Development of the Jordan Performance Appraisal System (JPAS) was completed in 1996. This study examined the factor structure of the classroom observation instrument used in the JPAS. Using observed classroom instructional quality ratings of 1220 elementary teachers of Grades 1-6 in the Jordan School District, this study estimated the factor structure of the data and the rater effect on relevant structural parameters. This study also tested for measurement invariance at the within and between levels across teachers of two grade-level groups (a) lower grades: Grades 1-3 and (b) upper grades: Grades 4-6. Factor structure was estimated using complex exploratory factor analysis (EFA) conducted on a subset of the original data. The analysis provided evidence of a three-factor model for the combined groups. The results of multiple confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) conducted using a different subset of the data cross-validated EFA results. Results from multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (MCFA) indicated the three-factor model fit best at both the within and the between levels, and that the intraclass correlation (ICC) was high (.699), indicating significant rater-level variance. Results from a multilevel multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MLMG-CFA) indicated that the ICC was not significantly different between groups. Results also indicated configural, metric (weak factorial), and scalar (strong factorial) equivalence between groups. This study provided one of the first examples of how to estimate the impact of cluster-level variables such as rater on grouping variables nested at the within level. It provided an example of how to conduct a multilevel multigroup analysis on count data. It also disproved the assumption that counting classroom teaching behaviors was less subjective than using a categorical rating scale. These results will provide substantial information for future developments made to the classroom observation instrument used in the JPAS.

This research develops and tests a model of the service unit ownership and control patterns used by international service companies. The main purpose of this study is to investigate trivariate causal relationships among environmental factors, organizational structure, and perceived performance in the internationalization process of service firms. A service firm operating in foreign soil has a choice of three general entry mode strategies offering different degrees of ownership and control of its remote operating units located in foreign countries -- full ownership arrangement, joint venture arrangement, and franchising arrangement. The entry mode strategies chosen depend on the factors relating to internal environment of a specific firm, industry related factors in which the firm operates, and external environment of the operating units at national context. This study identifies these factors, investigates how they affect the firm's choice of entry modes, and finally examines the impact of entry mode on firm's performance. The overall model has been explained by contingency theory that conceptualizes optimal level of ownership and control mode as a response by the firm to the interplay of environmental factors and as a determinant of firm's performance. To this core can be added complementary theories which are borrowed from agency theory, transaction cost theory, and resource dependence theory. These theories explain the linkages between market entry mode and each type of environmental factors. In order to empirically test the hypotheses, data were collected from hospitality firms regarding the ownership structure of subsidiaries located in foreign countries. As a whole, the conceptual model developed in the study received strong support from the empirical study. This study found a positive impact of contingency fit on performance and so support contingency theory in which some combinations of the environmental dimensions and organizational structure will lead to better organizational performance. Another finding of this study indicates that the increased level of ownership and control will result in enhancing the level of perceived performance. It should be noted that contingency model-based mode choice would provide managers with the optimal performance because there is not one best performing mode choice in volatile international market. Next, the relationship of market environment with organizational structure was examined through three different perspectives. Market environment was investigated at firm, industry, and national context, which includes five factors -- monitoring uncertainty, asset specificity, cultural distance, political uncertainty, and economic uncertainty. The model is suggestive of a picture in which five environmental factors vie for affecting the choice of market entry modes. All five environmental factors were found to be significantly related to firms' organizational structure. Among five environmental factors, cultural uncertainty has the largest effect on the choice of entry mode followed by monitoring uncertainty, political uncertainty, asset specificity, and economic uncertainty. One of the important implications of this research is the inclusion of franchising as an actual management strategy and competitive business practice that is related to international ownership and control strategy. Higher degrees of uncertainty associated with the foreign market encourage external dependence of the venture, in which the operation depends more heavily on local relationships. Franchising substitutes the loss of ownership by an increase of external relationships and it takes without losing control on retail operation. Resource exploitation depends on the local market for either inputs or outputs for better performance. Understanding the fit between the each set of contingent variables and the elements of ownership and control strategy will allow marketers to determine when franchising is the suitable mode of operation in global markets. Collectively, these results suggest that the choice of an organizational form for international service firms involves a complex balance of firm, industry, and country level factors. Managers can maximize performance by aligning entry mode strategy with external contextual circumstances as well as internal resources. Managers may also be able to make better mode choice decisions using the theory-driven criteria examined in this study, increasing their chances for financial and non-financial success. / Ph. D.