Thesis (M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2016. / The study seeks to establish whether social cohesion is a factor for the success or failure of an LED project. This process is important as there is a need to understand what are some of the factors that are integral to the functioning of LED projects to the extent of them (the LED projects) serving the intended purpose. There seems to be a general understanding that projects would naturally thrive albeit without proper understanding of the reasons thereof. This study seeks to provide for an understanding on the part of participants in projects as well as to the stakeholders that would support such projects of the probable factors that would lead to the success or failure of projects. This is very important as such factors need consistent consideration. The study focussed only on active participants of a LED projects within the geographical area of Polokwane over the period of the study. These projects were supported by the Polokwane Municipality as well as the Limpopo Department of Agriculture. Within this context the researcher argues that social cohesion is imperative for the success or failure of LED projects. It is also further argued that the projects‟ successes or failures are not solely in economic terms but also on the social bonds that hold together communities or members of projects that have a common goal or objective. A quantitative research method was used to gather data. A random sample of 85 respondents was interviewed by the researcher from both successful and failed projects. The data were analysed using the SPSS software with specific focus on Chi-square analysis. The study found that social cohesion is a factor for the success or failure of an LED project. Further it was established that factors such as education of the respondents play a role. It is observed from the findings that these factors are important for social cohesion to be a factor for success of LED projects. Further, it has been also observed there is an opportunity to compare the influence of education separately as a factor for success against the influence of incubation. However such could be an opportunity for further studies. It has been observed that this study contributes to the understanding of the importance of social cohesion in the implementation of LED projects both those that are stakeholder supported and those that are not. There are lessons to be learned about the importance of this factor over and above the economic practices of the LED processes. This study emphasises the importance of the human and societal elements to the implementation of LED projects that may be overlooked and/or assumed to have a role although not clearly defined. The study seeks to make provision for the fact that stakeholders involved in the implementation of LED projects need to incorporate and weigh the importance of social cohesion, education and incubation as integral components for the success of an LED project over and above invested material resources. These lessons may also be transferable to projects other than LEDs that seeks to understand the success or failure in their implementations.

Journal article published in The Qualitative Report 2018 Volume 23, Number 10, How to Article 2, 2264-2275 / This paper describes conditions that led to the use of a smartphone to collect qualitative data instead of using a digital voice recorder as the standard device for recording of interviews. Through reviewing technical documents, the paper defines a smartphone and describes its applications that are useful in the research process. It further points out possible uses of other applications of a smartphone in the research process. The paper concludes that a smartphone is a valuable device to researchers

Within the growing concern about the short-term and lasting impacts of natural hazard-based disasters on lives, livelihoods and economies, the ability to manage disaster and climate risk is central to sustainable development. As many recent disasters are directly or indirectly related to weather or climate, and with the expectation that climate variability and change may exacerbate the frequency and/or intensity of related hazards and extreme weather events, climate information has become a critical component of disaster and climate risk management. However, despite its increasing use, as well as money, time and effort into gathering and processing the relevant data, few studies highlight the connection between climate information and development outcomes. Using a Caribbean lens, this dissertation explores how the awareness, provision and use of weather and climate information, including storm advisories/forecasts and satellite-based rainfall data, may be linked to development outcomes, both in terms of localized impacts of weather- and climate-related events but also within the wider macro-economy. I explore if development outcomes may vary by event day-of-week timing (hypothesizing a relation to possible differences in climate information provision), study whether there may be a human element of improving climate information, and analyze climate information details to best understand its potential use in Caribbean small states. Such research aligns well with ongoing efforts to understand and predict extreme events, as well as connect disasters to socio-economic outcomes, and can also enrich perspectives which concern assessing vulnerability to disasters and recommending solutions to improve risk communication and strengthen disaster preparedness and resilience.

Reasoning Mind (RM) incorporates aspects of Russian mathematics pedagogy and curricula into its online math program. Our investigation identifies typical attributes of Russian pedagogy discussed in news articles and publications by Russian education experts, then determines how these attributes arise in RM. Analysis of RM's implementation of the characteristics reveals more successful inclusion of curricular attributes than classroom strategies. Thus, we outline classroom techniques that could be assimilated into RM to provide a more Russian learning experience along with students' exposure to Russian-style curricula.

The question of what constitutes a culture has often been answered in one phrase: shared knowledge. Recent developments in both the theory and mathematics of examining this shared cultural knowledge allow researchers to produce mathematical models of informants' knowledge and perceptions of the culture they belong to. Many studies in cognitive anthropology have utilized these theoretical and mathematical tools: the present research sought to integrate a research design (based on the theory and mathematics mentioned above) with a relatively new cultural domain: the culture of sports. Three main question pertaining to cultural knowledge were addressed in this research: 1) Did an informant's behavioral embeddedness in sports correspond to their cognitive embeddedness? 2) Did informants' behavioral embeddedness (as a qroup) affect their perceptions of the sports culture they belonqed to? 3) Did informants' coqnitive embeddedness (as a qroup) affect their perceptions of the sports culture they belonged to? Behavioral embeddedness was measured using an instrument that contained 96 bioqraphical variables primarily designed to investigate an informant's participation in sports. Cognitive embeddedness was measured using an instrument based on consensus theory. Subjects' perceptions (called "world view" in this study) of sports were based on their judgements of similarities and differences among 10 sports. These judgements were evoked by triadic analysis. Both consensus theory and triadic analysis followed the framework laid out in Romney and Weller's systematic Data Analysis. Sixty-six informants completed a self-administered survey containing the three parts mentioned above. Because of the nature of the sample used, this study was treated as an ethnography. It was hypothesized that a) behavioral and cognitive embeddedness were correlated and, b) more culturally embedded individuals would have more "sophisticated" perceptions of sports culture. The first hypothesis was not supported: only weak correlations were found between cognitive embeddedness and variables measuring behavioral embeddedness. For the second hypothesis, the exact opposite was found: the more culturally embedded groups of informants had less "sophisticated" perceptions of the sports culture they belonged to.

A grounded theory method was used to investigate the experiences of women who use naturopathic medicine, a system of alternative therapy, for health care during the menopausal transition. Transcripts of 16 in-depth interviews with women who received naturopathic health care during the menopausal transition were analyzed with respect to three research questions: (a) Why do women seek naturopathic health care during the menopausal transition? (b) Do women who use naturopathic treatment for menopausal health care share similar experiences of menopause? and ( c) Are women satisfied with the naturopathic treatment they receive for menopausal health care? Conditions leading to informants' use of naturopathy were represented by two categories: Practicing natural self-care, and Rejecting the conventional medical system Experiences of menopause were represented by three categories: It's not a singular event, Paying attention to changes in and around me, and Information helps. Informants' satisfaction with naturopathy for menopause-related health care was represented by four categories: Naturopathy is consistent with engaging in natural self-care practices, Naturopathy is effective in treating troubling menopausal signs, Naturopathy addresses individual and interrelated aspects of menopause, and Naturopathy provides moral and informational support. Continued analysis of the data revealed a core category, Exchanging infonnation, that provided a foundation for the theoretical model representing the experience of women who use naturopathic health care at menopause. The grounded theory developed in this study may be useful to health professionals by increasing understanding of the naturopathic health care option for menopausal women. Suggestions for further study include quantitative evaluation of components of the theory developed in this study, continued qualitative and quantitative investigation of aspects of information exchange between patients and their conventional and alternative practitioners, application of grounded theory methodology to studies of women's use of hormone replacement therapy, and application of grounded theory methodology to studies of patients' selection of alternative medicine for health matters other than menopause.

This dissertation uses the reading patterns of New York’s earliest elites, including a significant portion of the founding fathers, who checked out books from the New York Society Library (NYSL), to evaluate the shifting meanings of political thought, affiliation, and action in the years between the ratification of the Constitution and the War of 1812. The reading data come from two charging ledgers spanning two periods –1789 to 1792, and 1799 to 1806 – during which a new country was built, relations with foreign nations defined, and contestation over the character of a new democracy was intense. Using novel combinations of text and network analysis, I explore the political nature of reading and the extent to which social, economic, and political positions overlapped with what people read. In the process, I identify the key social and cultural dimensions on which New York, and by extension, American, elite society was politically stratified in its early years.

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There appears to be a growing recognition among economists and other social commentators that people attempt to enhance their relative position (which is commonly described as status) through consumption choices and other behaviour. It has been less common to consider whether attempts to enhance relative position impact on saving behaviour. This thesis makes a number of contributions relating to the impact of relative position on saving behaviour. In this thesis I: - consider why concern for relative position may impact on saving behaviour. I demonstrate, with a simple intertemporal model the surprising result that when people are concerned with relative position, income risk can lead to most people saving less and the rich saving more. - conduct an empirical study to test the importance of relative position on saving behaviour. I find a statistically and economically significant relationship between peer income and saving behaviour consistent with theories that people actively forgo saving to seek to enhance their relative position. I use the data to demonstrate that relative position can help to explain why prior research has consistently found that the rich have higher saving rates. - consider the policy implications of relative position to saving behaviour. I examine the policies, primarily corrective taxation, that have been advocated to address externalities of relative position in a static setting. I find that there are significant issues when these policies are considered in an intertemporal setting. I examine the policy of mandatory saving in addressing distortions caused by relative position and the possibility that concern for relative position improves the effectiveness of mandatory saving policy.

Funded by the Primary Health Care Initiatives Program. Bibliography: p. 161-170. This thesis examines the public health of breastfeeding from a feminist perspective, based on a qualitative longitudinal study. From reviewing the history of infant feeding, a number of discourses of breastfeeding are identified and their continuing influence on contemporary thinking is discussed.