This journal article format dissertation examined aspects of survey research methodology in health education. In the first study, the author examined articles published in Health Education and Behavior, Health Education Journal, Health Education Research, and International Electronic Journal of Health Education to assess if authors report survey instrument characteristics and results of psychometric property tests for data collected with survey instruments. In the second study, the author examined the validity and reliability of data collected from 1,992 Indiana middle and high school students with the Adolescent Health Risk Behavior Survey (AHRBS) instrument. The AHRBS instrument was created using the Biopsychosocial Model (BPSM) theoretical framework and investigates the relationships and influences of adolescents? intrapersonal and normative perceptions on alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use. In the third study, the author used reliable measures for the data to conduct mediation analyses to examine the effects of adolescent perceptions of their social environment, such as perceived peer disapproval, perceived parental disapproval, and perceived peer behavior, on adolescent lifetime inhalant use in the presence of the theorized mediator variable, characteristics of the peer group. The author concluded the following: (1) published articles in the four health education journals inconsistently reported survey instrument characteristics or results of psychometric property testing for the data collected with survey instruments; (2) systematically eliminating items due to their limited contribution to scale reliability for these data using exploratory factor analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, and calculating internal consistency reliability shortened the AHRBS instrument by 41.18% and improved the reliability of measures for these data; and (3) the effects of perceived peer disapproval, perceived parental disapproval, and perceived peer behavior on adolescent lifetime inhalant use were significantly mediated by characteristics of the peer group as theorized by the BPSM. Findings of this dissertation have implications for the field of health education. First, survey instrument characteristics and internal reliability coefficients for data collected with instrument scales should be reported in published manuscripts. Second, researchers should examine the validity and reliability of data collected with survey instruments. Third, only reliable measures for the data should be used in statistical analyses.

There is considerable debate about the optimal methods to be taken in measuring work related stressor-strain links. This study has explored these issues by testing a two-factor approach of assessing occupationally and organisationally linked stressors. The discriminant validity of the Job Stress Survey (JSS; Spielberger & Vagg, 1999) was tested in this study. 1,050 employees from seven National Health Service (NHS) Trusts were examined to evaluate the degree to which JSS subscales of Job Pressure and Lack of Organizational Support differentiated between staff experiences of occupational and organisational stressors respectively. Support for the discriminant validity of the JSS was obtained with inter-occupational differences in Job Pressure when comparing between the seven NHS staff groups surveyed. By contrast, staff subjected to major organisational change were more likely to report high levels of Lack of Organizational Support than those not facing such change. The satisfactory discriminant validity of the JSS has general implications for stress prevention and management. Workers in occupations prone to high occupational stress could benefit from targeted stress management interventions, whereas endemic organisational stress could be more effectively tackled with an organisation-wide focus. MIS workers' degree of Neuroticism appeared to bias links between stressors and strains. Also, when compared with low-ranking and high-ranking staff, middle-ranking workers had the highest levels of stressor experiences and the lowest job satisfaction. As a result, future research and interventions should consider the role of Neuroticism and occupational seniority, as these variables significantly influenced NHS employees' stress experiences. It is also recommended that research into workplace stress should involve the statistical control of Neuroticism. By neglecting the crucial role of Neuroticism, researchers may be ignoring the full extent to which this personality trait may distort the true link between a stressor and subsequent strain.

Background: Annual screening of sexually active women aged 15 -24 years for Chlamydia trachomatis has been widely advocated. Goal: Examine relationships between physician characteristics and reported rates of sexual history taking, testing patients for chlamydia, and contact tracing activities taken. Study Design: Two hundred and forty one physicians in Nova Scotia completed a mailed questionnaire. Results: Contextual factors associated with the patient visit, demographic characteristics of the physician, and their beliefs, attitudes and perceptions were associated with rates of sexual history taking, and of annually testing for chlamydia. Further, physicians in Nova Scotia did not perform as well as might be expected with respect to contact tracing activities. Conclusion: The frequency of sexual history taking and patient testing were below recommended levels. Both modifiable and non-modifiable characteristics held by physicians were associated with these reported rates. Physicians may be failing to adequately assess and manage patients infected with chlamydia.

This thesis presents the results of an investigation into the regional gravity field of Great Britain and the adjacent regions. A prerequisite for this study was the development of a computer database designed to store, manipulate and display the information contained within nearly 400,000 gravity and topography point observations for the region. Digital image processing techniques have been applied to the reduction and display of the Bouguer anomaly data. The observed Bouguer anomaly lineaments display a pattern of geological basement structures which correlates closely with those predicted by recent plate tectonic models of the Lower Palaeozoic Caledonian orogeny which assume the convergence of three distinct continental plates. The nature of the isostatic compensation of the topography in the vicinity of the United Kingdom has been investigated using cross spectral analysis of the gravity and topography. The observed cross spectral relationships are compared with those for a theoretical isostatic model which assumes the lithosphere behaves like a thin elastic plate loaded by both surface topography and internal density contrasts overlying an inviscid fluid substratum. For a uniform elastic thickness of the continental lithosphere the best fit between the observed and theoretical relationships is obtained for values of the elastic thickness of the lithosphere of 22.5-24.5 km. A better fit is obtained if the continental lithosphere is assumed to comprise a population of distinct tectonic provinces of equal area with the values of the elastic thickness of the lithosphere for the provinces distributed uniformly between 6-8 km and 86-90 km. Detailed investigations into the structure of the crust beneath the Tertiary igneous complexes of Mull and Skye, northwest Scotland, indicate a possible slight thickening of the crust which is considered to be an important consequence of the mechanism of the emplacement of the complexes.

The measurement of industries' environmental performance is evolving as society strives towards the ideal of sustainability. Environmental performance indicators within different industries are being developed in order that industry can measure and evaluate performance and report on their level of environmental protection to different stakeholders. Although there are many studies of environmental performance measures, they have tended to focus on those that apply to manufacturing or 'dirtier' industries. This is mainly because environmental legislation, a major driver of environmental programmes in companies, has targeted these industries. Recent legislation on packaging has focused, for the first time, on environmental impacts that are pertinent to all industry sectors alike. This has given rise to an industry-wide set of environmental performance measures for packaging and packaging waste. This 'producer responsibility' legislation has marked the turning point as more legislation is formulated at the European and national level to holistically tackle the environmental impacts of product life-cycles. Current research has concentrated on the development of performance measures for a service-orientated business that is subject to legislation concerning packaging waste, using ICL (International Computers Limited) plc. as a case study example. Particular attention has been given, in this research, to the identification of EPIs and their integration into an ISO 14Q01 certifiable environmental management system for the purposes of demonstrating continuous improvement. A risk assessment methodology is applied to demonstrate the effects of business constraints in the decision-making process regarding environmental programmes. The impacts of the UK Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997 on the organisation and the necessary steps that the-company has had to take in order to comply with the legislation have been examined. From this study a compliance methodology has been developed and it has been demonstrated how an organisation can achieve compliance and conserve valuable resources for improving its environmental performance. Finally, a survey has been carried out in order to assess the impacts of the UK Packaging Regulations on the environmental performance of industry. From this study a model has been developed for the application of EPIs to guide policy makers in the formulation of environmental legislation and the implications for future producer responsibility legislation.

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We use the 2dF QSO Redshift Survey, to investigate whether QSOs are detectably gravitationally lensed. Lensing could magnify and distort light from QSOs, influencing QSO numbers near galaxies, which trace structure in our Universe. Following Boyle, Fong & Shanks (1988), we find a 3σ anti-correlation between QSOs and galaxy groups of strength W (_gg)(< 10') = -0.049. We limit absorption by dust in groups to A(_B) < 0.04 mag. To explain the anti-correlation by dust would need Ab ≈ 0.2 mag. We demonstrate that if the dearth of QSOs around groups is due to statistical lensing, more mass would be required in groups than Ω(_m) = 0.3 models suggest. We use a mock catalogue to test how many of our "2D" galaxy groups, which are detected using angular information, are associated in redshift-space. We then utilise 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey groups, which are selected to trace dark matter haloes, to test the hypothesis that there is more mass in groups than Ωr(_m) = 0.3 models suggest, finding we cannot discount a lensing mass of 2dFGRS groups that is consistent with ACDM. We find QSOs and galaxies are also anti-correlated at the 3σ level, with strength w(< 10’) = -0.007 and use stars as a control sample to rule out observational systematics as a cause. By measuring QSO colours as a function of QSO-galaxy separation, we argue that obscuration by dust in galaxies could explain at most 30-40 per cent of the anti correlation. We show that if the anti-correlation is due to lensing, galaxies would be anti-biased [b ~ 0.05) on small scales. We discuss two surveys carried out to count faint QSOs, which newly identify 160 QSOs. We calculate that the faint-end QSO number-counts have a slope of 0.29 ± 0.03. Finally, we use our faint QSO data, to estimate that ~ 85(75) per cent of g < 21.15 (≥ 21.15) candidates targeted by the 2dFSDSS survey will be QSOs.

Thesis (M.S.P.H.)--University of Louisville, 2004. / Department of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics. Vita. "December 2004." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-65).

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University