E-Government is the use of information technology particularly web applications to deliver convenient services for citizens, business and government. Governments worldwide spend billions of their budgets in order to deliver convenient electronic services to their citizens. There are two important points; government offers online services, and citizens consume these services. In order to maximize the benefits of these projects and to avoid possible failures, the gap between these points should be addressed. Yet there are few empirical studies that have covered the relevant issues of adoption from the citizen perspective in developing countries. This research study investigates citizens’ acceptance of e-government services in the context of Saudi Arabia. It posits an integrated model of the key elements that influence citizens’ adoption of e-government. The framework includes a combination of attitudinal, social, control and trust factors as well as the influence of gender. The model is validated by surveying 533 citizens and utilising the structural equation modeling technique for data analysis. Findings show that both measurement and structural models exhibit good model fit to data. The study shows that all constructs satisfy the criteria of constructs reliability and convergent and discriminant validity. The paths estimations show that of the sixteen designed casual relationships, eleven paths relationships were found to be significant while the other five paths remained unsupported.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Family Studies and Human Services / Jared R. Anderson / The current study tests a theoretical model exploring the relationship between hooking up and marital quality and whether this relationship is mediated by sexual satisfaction and communication using public-use data from currently married participants in Wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health, n = 1,729). Gender proved to significantly moderate the association between the variables in the model, but college education did not. The results indicate that hooking up has a direct negative relationship with marital quality for men that is not mediated by either sexual satisfaction or communication. The results for women revealed no direct relationship between hooking up and marital quality, but an indirect influence via communication.

Thesis advisor: Thomas O'Hare / Psychopathy has received a marked increase in attention in the research literature over the past 2 decades since the validation and standardization of assessment tools designed to measure this construct, particularly the Psychopathy Checklist-measures (Hare, 1991/2003; Hart, Cox, & Hare, 1995; and Forth, Kosson, & Hare, 2003). Psychopathy has been identified as the best single predictor of violence among adult offenders (Hart, 1998). Such findings have led some to conclude that "psychopathy is the most important psychological construct for policy and practice in the criminal justice system" (Harris, Skilling, & Rice, 2001). Despite the overwhelming evidence of substantial societal and individual costs attributable to this disorder, little is known about psychosocial precursors of psychopathy. This study examines risk factors related to the development of psychopathy, as measured by the PCL:SV, in a sample of 446 psychiatric patients using structural equation modeling (SEM). The final SEM includes five predictor variables measuring early-life physical abuse, paternal antisocial behavior, and cognitive ability. Severe physical abuse (&beta; = 0.17, <italic>p</italic> = .043), biological father's alcohol abuse history (&beta; = .16, <italic>p</italic> =.004), biological father's arrest history (&beta; = 0.13, <italic>p</italic> = .02), and the subject's cognitive ability (&beta; = -0.18, <italic>p</italic> < .001) were found predictive of psychopathy in this sample. Post hoc analyses comparing male and female subjects, and black and white subjects, indicate different causal pathways in the development of psychopathy among these groups. Future research designed to assess these potentially different causal pathways are recommended. Implications to clinical theory, practice, and policy are also discussed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

The 24 items of the original English version of the Social Justice Scale (Torres-Harding et al., 2012) were translated into Korean by four translators, who discussed and agreed upon consensus versions. Four different translators then back translated this version into English. The resulting Korean version of SJS (K-SJS) was completed by 537 adult native Korean speakers. Confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and multi-group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the K-SJS has high internal consistency, factors appropriately, fits the original model well, and demonstrates invariance across Korean men and women. Structural equation modeling indicated that the effects of attitude, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms on behavioral intentions were positive and significant. In short, the K-SJS showed acceptable reliability and validity based on a large sample of South Korean adults and shows promise as a new tool to study social justice attitudes among Korean speakers.

The present study examined a model of Black Cultural Strength and its relation to psychosocial health (N = 496). The purpose of the current study was to test a model of Black Cultural Strength, an interdependent combination of Black racial identity, communalism, cultural spirituality, positive racial socialization, and effective racism-related coping. Further, the study sought to understand if Black Cultural Strength could predict psychosocial health, a combination of life satisfaction and psychological well-being. The Black Cultural Strength model, which was tested through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), hypothesized that higher levels of Black Cultural Strength lead to increased self-reported psychological well-being and life satisfaction. Results from this study indicated that Black Americans’ levels of mature racial identity, exposure to positive racial socialization (preparation for bias and cultural socialization), effective racism related coping (constrained resistance, empowered action, confrontation, and spiritual coping), culturally-based spirituality, and communalism were all interdependent and loaded onto one factor, Black Cultural Strength. Further, results showed that Black Cultural Strength was positively predictive of Blacks’ psychosocial health. Although the proposed hypotheses were supported, and an overall acceptable model fit was found, two modifications were made to the original proposed model. These modifications were conducted with theory and past empirical findings in consideration, therefore the current study provides strong evidence to support that interdependent Black cultural values are positively predictive of psychosocial health. Limitations, clinical implications, and further directions of research are discussed.

Kwan, Lok Yin. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-83). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter CHAPTER ONE: --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / The basic mediation model --- p.1 / General approaches in mediation analysis --- p.2 / Resampling methods --- p.8 / Comparing indirect effects --- p.9 / A sequential model fitting method --- p.10 / Current interest of study --- p.13 / Chapter CHAPTER TWO: --- STANDARDIZATION OF PATH COEFFICIENTS --- p.15 / Chapter CHAPTER THREE: --- COMPARING STANDARDIZED INDIRECT EFFECTS --- p.19 / Chapter CHAPTER FOUR: --- REAL EXAMPLES --- p.28 / Chapter CHAPTER FIVE: --- DISCUSSION --- p.55 / Chapter CHAPTER SIX: --- CONCLUSION --- p.57 / APPENDICES --- p.58 / REFERENCES --- p.80

The present study evaluated direct and indirect associations between aerobic fitness, executive control, and emotion regulation among a sample of children aged 8-12 years. To evaluate these associations, the study employed a cross-sectional design and full-information maximum likelihood (FIML) structural equation modeling. Although the hypothesized factor analytic model failed to converge, an alternative exploratory model allowed for the evaluation of associations between primary study variables. Results supported a moderate direct association between childhood aerobic fitness and executive control, a strong direct negative association between executive control and emotion regulation, and a moderate indirect association between aerobic fitness and emotion regulation through executive control. These findings provide preliminary evidence that executive control functions as a mediator between aerobic fitness and emotion regulation and may help explain the means by which aerobic exercise exerts its influence on emotional wellbeing among preadolescent children.

This thesis is about composite-based structural equation modeling. Structural equation modeling in general can be used to model both theoretical concepts and their relations to one another. In traditional factor-based structural equation modeling, these theoretical concepts are modeled as common factors, i.e., as latent variables which explain the covariance structure of their observed variables. In contrast, in composite-based structural equation modeling, the theoretical concepts can be modeled both as common factors and as composites, i.e., as linear combinations of observed variables that convey all the information between their observed variables and all other variables in the model. This thesis presents some methodological advancements in the field of composite-based structural equation modeling. In all, this thesis is made up of seven chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the underlying model, as well as explicating the meaning of the term composite-based structural equation modeling. Chapter 2 gives guidelines on how to perform Monte Carlo simulations in the statistic software R using the package “cSEM” with various estimators in the context of composite-based structural equation modeling. These guidelines are illustrated by an example simulation study that investigates the finite sample behavior of partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) and consistent partial least squares (PLSc) estimates, particularly regarding the consequences of sample correlations between measurement errors on statistical inference. The third Chapter presents estimators of composite-based structural equation modeling that are robust in responding to outlier distortion. For this purpose, estimators of composite-based structural equation modeling, PLS-PM and PLSc, are adapted. Unlike the original estimators, these adjustments can avoid distortion that could arise from random outliers in samples, as is demonstrated through a simulation study. Chapter 4 presents an approach to performing predictions based on models estimated with ordinal partial least squares and ordinal consistent partial least squares. Here, the observed variables lie on an ordinal categorical scale which is explicitly taken into account in both estimation and prediction. The prediction performance is evaluated by means of a simulation study. In addition, the chapter gives guidelines on how to perform such predictions using the R package “cSEM”. This is demonstrated by means of an empirical example. Chapter 5 introduces confirmatory composite analysis (CCA) for research in “Human Development”. Using CCA, composite models can be estimated and assessed. This chapter uses the Henseler-Ogasawara specification for composite models, allowing, for example, the maximum likelihood method to be used for parameter estimation. Since the maximum likelihood estimator based on the Henseler-Ogasawara specification has limitations, Chapter 6 presents another specification of the composite model by means of which composite models can be estimated with the maximum likelihood method. The results of this maximum likelihood estimator are compared with those of PLS-PM, thus showing that this maximum likelihood estimator gives valid results even in finite samples. The last chapter, Chapter 7, gives an overview of the development and different strands of composite-based structural equation modeling. Additionally, here I examine the contribution the previous chapters make to the wider distribution of composite-based structural equation modeling. / Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit kompositen-basierter Strukturgleichungmodellierung. Strukturgleichungsmodellierung kann genutzt werden um sowohl theoretische Konzepte als auch deren Beziehungen untereinander zu modellieren. In der traditionellen faktor-basierten Strukturgleichungsmodellierung werden diese theoretischen Konzepte als “common factor”, d.h. als latente Variablen, die die Kovarianzstruktur ihrer beobachteten Variablen erklären, modelliert. Im Gegensatz dazu, können in kompositen-basierter Strukturgleichungsmodellierung die theoretischen Konzepte sowohl als “common factor” als auch als Komposite, also als Linearkombinationen beobachteter Variablen, die die gesamte Information zwischen ihren beobachteten Variablen und allen anderen Variablen im Modell übertragen, modelliert werden. Diese Arbeit stellt einige methodische Weiterentwicklungen im Bereich der kompositenbasierten Strukturgleichungsmodellierung vor. Sie besteht aus insgesamt 7 Kapiteln. Kapitel 1 gibt zunächst einen Überblick über das zugrundeliegende Modell sowie über die Definition des Begriffs der kompositen-basierten Strukturgleichungsmodellierung. In Kapitel 2 wird anschließend eine Anleitung dafür gegeben, wie Monte Carlo Simulationen in der Statistik Software R mittels des Pakets “cSEM” für verschiedene Schätzer, die der kompositen-basierten Strukturgleichungsmodellierung zugeordnet werden, durchgeführt werden können. Diese Anleitung wird anhand einer beispielhaften Simulationsstudie veranschaulicht, die das Verhalten von Partial Least Squares Path Modeling (PLS-PM) und consistent Partial Least Squares (PLSc) Schätzungen in endlichen Stichproben untersucht, insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Auswirkungen von Stichprobenkorrelationen zwischen Messfehlern auf statistische Inferenz. Im dritten Kapitel werden Schätzer der kompositen-basierten Strukturgleichungsmodellierung vorgestellt, die robust gegenüber Ausreißern sind. Dafür werden Schätzer der kompositen-basierten Strukturgleichungsmodellierung, PLS-PM und PLSc, angepasst. Im Gegensatz zu den ursprünglichen Schätzern, können mit diesen Anpassungen Verzerrungen, die durch zufällig entstandene Ausreißer in Stichproben entstehen können, vermieden werden, was anhand einer Simulationsstudie gezeigt wird. In Kapitel 4 wird eine Methode zur Durchführung von Vorhersagen auf Basis von Modellen vorgestellt, die mit ordinal Partial Least Squares und ordinal consistent Partial Least Squares geschätzt wurden. Die beobachteten Variablen sind dabei ordinal kategorial skaliert, was sowohl bei der Schätzung als auch der Vorhersage explizit berücksichtigt wird. Die Vorhersagegüte wird mittels einer Simulationsstudie untersucht. Zusätzlich wird eine Anleitung, wie solche Vorhersagen mittels des R Pakets “cSEM” durchgeführt werden können, gegeben. Diese wird anhand eines empirischen Beispiels demonstriert. In Kapitel 5 wird die konfirmatorische Kompositenanalyse für Forschung im Bereich von “Human Development” vorgestellt. Mittels konfirmatorischer Kompositenanalyse können Kompositenmodelle geschätzt und auch evaluiert werden. In diesem Kapitel wird die Henseler-Ogasawara Spezifikation für Kompositenmodelle verwendet, wodurch beispielsweise die Maximum Likelihood Methode zur Parameterschätzung verwendet werden kann. Da der auf der Henseler-Ogasawara Spezifikation basierende Maximum Likelihood Schätzer Nachteile aufweist, wird in Kapitel 6 eine andere Spezifikation des Kompositmodells vorgestellt, mit der Kompositenmodelle mit der Maximum Likelihood Methode geschätzt werden können. Die Ergebnisse dieses Maximum Likelihood Schätzers werden mit denen von PLS-PM verglichen und somit gezeigt, dass dieser Maximum Likelihood Schätzer auch in endlichen Stichproben valide Ergebnisse liefert. Das letzte Kapitel, Kapitel 7, gibt einen Überblick über die Entwicklung und die verschiedenen Stränge der kompositen-basierten Strukturgleichungsmodellierung. Darüber hinaus wird hier der Beitrag, den die vorangegangenen Kapitel zur weiteren Verbreitung kompositen-basierter Strukturgleichungsmodellierung leisten, aufgezeigt.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the appropriateness of B2B technology transfer in developing countries, particularly in Thailand. This study seeks an understanding of how Thai culture affects the appropriateness of B2B technology adoption for inter-firm communication in Thailand. A research model was developed for investigating this issue via a strategic fit lens. The proposed model extended the Task-technology fit (TTF) model by Goodhue and Thompson (1995) by integrating interorganisational theories and theories of national culture. This research takes the view that, to achieve a high utilisation of B2B technology adoption, firms in developing countries need to adopt effective IT strategies that align with their local environment. Hence, this research proposes that cultural fit is a major influence on the perception of appropriateness of B2B technology adoption in Thailand. The study was conducted using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The first study, the qualitative study, was conducted as a preliminary study by interviewing officials in the Thai government and companies in the tourism industry. The objectives were to explore and identify the cultural dimensions that impact on the appropriateness of B2B technology adoption in Thailand. The resulting dimensionalities of cultural fit are: personal relationships; long-term relationships; interorganisational trust; ability to communicate in the English language and materialism. The second study was conducted via a quantitative approach and scales were developed to validate the proposed research model. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire, and analysed by using Structural Equation Modeling with Partial Least Squares (PLS) method. This study found that cultural fit does influence the appropriateness of B2B technology adoption in Thailand. A better perceived fit between Thai culture and B2B technology results in higher technology utilisation. In addition, the results of moderating effect analysis found that, although task-technology fit had no direct impact on utilisation, task-technology fit did have indirect impact on utilisation by moderating the impact of culture. Nevertheless, the results indicated that task-technology fit still had a greater impact on firms' perceived performance than utilisation.

Executive functions (EFs), specifically a child's ability to shift between two stimuli and a child's ability to inhibit a prepotent response, are a child's self-regulatory cognitive processes used towards achieving a goal (Garon, Bryson, & Smith, 2008) and have been found to predict later school readiness (e.g. Blair & Diamond, 2008; McClelland et al., 2007; Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996). The current study examined possible mechanisms, such as problem behaviors and theory of mind (ToM), through which executive functions predict later cognitive and social school readiness. Problem behaviors occur when children are not effectively functioning in social situations, while ToM is a social-cognitive skill that allows a child to understand another person's mental processes (Wellman, 2002). These variables have been found to relate to one another in predicting preschool children's competence in numerous domains (see Carlson, Mandell, & Williams, 2004; Hughes, 1998b). Little research has been done on how these variables may mediate the relation between EFs and cognitive and social school readiness. This short-term longitudinal study assessed the unique contributions of ToM and problem behaviors to cognitive and social school readiness. Problem behaviors mediated the relation between EF, specifically inhibition, and social school readiness. Both teacher reports and direct assessment of EF revealed that EF, and specifically shifting, were direct predictors of later cognitive school readiness. However, ToM did not mediate any of the relations between EF and either social or cognitive school readiness. These results have several implications for education, including intervening with a child's ability to inhibit in order to improve problem behaviors and later social school readiness, as well as improving children's ability to mentally and behaviorally shift between sets of information in order to improve cognitive school readiness.