Student-athletes enter higher education in the United States with diverse backgrounds and academic preparation. In some cases, student-athletes are underprepared for the academic rigor, social structure, and ethical expectations of these institutions. Athletic coaches are charged with the recruitment of highly skilled, competitive, and prepared student-athletes, while other athletic officials are responsible to provide the proper academic support, care, and overall well-being of student-athletes. If coaches, athletic administrators, advisors, and learning specialists could identify educational and demographic patterns related to student-athletes' propensity to trust, they would be better equipped to gain these students' trust and help them navigate the stress related to athletic participation and academic demands. This quantitative study investigates the influence of individual student-athletes' propensity to trust and the relationship between academic success, measured by grade point average (GPA). This study also examines the relationship between propensity to trust and demographic and educational variables that may assist athletic coaches, athletic administrators, and athletic support staff, such as advisors and learning specialists, in better understanding the impact propensity to trust has on student-athletes. To determine propensity to trust, the current study used the validated Propensity to Trust Scale by Frazier, Johnson, and Fainshmidt (2013) as well as a demographic questionnaire developed to measure students' background and educational attributes. Responses to an online survey from 221 student-athletes were collected from a large, private research institution that participates in Division I National Collegiate Athletic Association athletics. Statistical analyses, including t-test, analysis of variance, and Fisher's Least Significant Difference post hoc test, were used to identify between-group differences, while multiple regression analyses identified differences in propensity to trust among demographic and educational variables. Findings indicate there was no significant differences in propensity to trust among scholarship and non-scholarship student-athletes, sex, or marital status, but significant differences did exist among student-athletes who are members of the church affiliated with the university, returned missionaries from the predominate religion, minority, and transfer students. In addition, differences in propensity to trust between different athletic teams were found. Finally, findings also indicate propensity to trust is related to current GPA. Implications from this study suggest that propensity to trust can be a valuable consideration when assessing how to provide proper support to current student-athletes. This research also suggests that a propensity to trust measure may be useful when recruiting prospective college student-athletes. Schools should not assume that propensity to trust is consistent among each team and each individual student-athlete.

Florence Nightingale used the principles of patient-centered care as the foundation for nursing practice. Today, patient-centered care delivery is part of the healthcare reform process that extends interprofessionally throughout all settings of healthcare in the United States (U.S.). Patient satisfaction measurement is one primary determinant of effective patient-centered care. The standardized Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey and methods is a nation-wide tool used to measure patient satisfaction. However, this method of patient satisfaction assessment relies on recollections of patients’ hospital experiences and requires accurate memory and recall. This study sought to examine the effect of the memory-experience gap on patients’ perceptions of their hospital experiences and address this research question: Are there any statistical differences between in-hospital and two-week post-discharge perceptions of patient-centered care as measured with HCAHPS patient satisfaction ratings on (a) the composite scores for communication with nurses, communication with physicians, communication about medicines, pain management, staff responsiveness, (b) the individual scores for the hospital environment’s cleanliness and quietness, and the inclusion of patient and family preferences in the plan of care, and (c) the overall global rating score? The design was a non-experimental, prospective, descriptive correlational study. The setting was a 255-bed regional hospital that serves individuals from eight surrounding rural counties in southern middle Tennessee. The case-mix contained diverse individuals with multiple economic, environmental, physical, social and spiritual dynamics. A convenience sample of 82 adult patients ages 26 - 93 represented mainly Caucasian females with mostly cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses who had a minimum one-day stay.

abstract: 现今的理论研究及实践表明，供应链上各个企业进行协调运作的基础是节点企业间有效信息进行高效传递。但供应链上下游企业在合作过程中通常存在信息不完全对称现象、牛鞭效应等问题，供应链中信息传递的实时性及真实性受到较大影响，这也是导致供应链管理整体效率不高的原因之一。因此，供应链伙伴间信息共享问题已是国内外学者普遍关注的焦点。本文旨在针对目前我国家居供应链企业间信息沟通不畅、信息共享不充分的问题及其理论研究的不足，来开展针对影响家居供应链企业间信息共享因素的实证研究。本文基于家居供应链这一特殊的行业供应链，建立基于家居供应链企业间信息共享关键影响因素理论模型，通过实证方法来寻找影响供应链企业间信息共享的关键因素及其具体影响程度。 在已有文献的基础上，本文提出信任、共同愿景、信息技术能力、渠道权力结构与信息共享间影响关系的概念模型，并对长三角及珠三角地区家居供应链经销商企业进行问卷调查研究。最后在回收的 164 份有效问卷基础上通过数据分析来验证假设。研究结果显示：(1)不论是家居工厂与经销商间还是家居卖场与经销商间，信任对共享信息的内容和质量都有显著正向影响。(2)家居工厂与经销商间的共同愿景对彼此间信息共享内容有显著正向影响作用，但对信息共享质量作用不明显。而家居卖场与经销商间的共同愿景对信息共享的内容和质量都有正向影响作用。(3)经销商的信息技术能力对双方间信息共享的内容和质量都有显著影响，同时，还能促进家居工厂与经销商之间的信任，间接影响双方的信息共享程度。(4) 家居卖场与经销商间的渠道权力对双方间的信任程度有显著影响，而对双方间的信息共享没有直接影响。 本研究主要研究贡献在于：发现影响家居供应链信息共享的关键因素，弥补了现有文献对中国供应链企业信息共享影响因素研究的不足，特别聚焦于家居供应链；从供应链上下游整体角度出发，探讨了中国情境下信任、共同愿景、信息技术能力和渠道权力结构与信息共享之间的作用机理。 / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2019

abstract: Social scientists from many disciplines have examined trust, including trust between those with different religious affiliations, emotional antecedents of trust, and physiological correlates of trust. However, little is known about how all of these factors intersect to shape trust behaviors. The current study aimed to examine physiological responses while individuals engaged in a trust game with a religious in-group or out-group member. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in which they were presented with the target’s profile before playing the game. In each of the conditions the target was described as either Catholic or Muslim and as someone who engaged in either costly signaling or anti-costly signaling behavior. In addition to assessing the amount of money invested as a behavioral measure of trust, physiological responses, specifically cardiac interbeat interval (IBI) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), were measured. I hypothesized that when playing the trust game with a Catholic target as opposed to a Muslim target, Christian participants would (1) report being more similar to the target, (2) trust the target more, (3) invest more money in the target, (4) have a more positive outlook on the amount invested, and (5) show greater cardiorespiratory down-regulation, reflected by increases in IBI and RSA. Findings revealed that Christian participants reported greater similarity and showed a non-significant trend toward reporting a more positive outlook on (greater confidence in/satisfaction with) their investment decision when playing a Catholic versus Muslim target. Additionally, Christian participants who played an anti-costly signaling Catholic target showed greater cardiorespiratory down-regulation (increases from baseline for IBI, reflecting slower heart rate, and increases in RSA) than Christian participants who played an anti-costly signaling Muslim target. Results from this study echo previous findings suggesting that perceived similarity may facilitate trust. Findings also are consistent with previous research suggesting that religious ingroup or outgroup membership may not be as influential in shaping trust decisions if the trustee is costly signaling; for anti-signaling, however, cardiorespiratory down-regulation to a religious ingroup member may be apparent. These physiological signals may provide interoceptive information about a peer’s trustworthiness. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2019

In response to increasing demands placed on public education, professional learning communities (PLC) have emerged as a means of providing teachers with opportunities to collaborate together. Collaboration has been shown to improve teaching practices and lead to better student outcomes. Many collaborative teams, however, struggle to reach their collaborative potential. Trust has been shown to be an important factor contributing to the success of collaborative efforts. Few studies exist that empirically assess the relationship between team functionality and team trust. This study examines the relationship between these two constructs. A measurement tool was developed by the author to measure PLC team functionality based on five domains of functionality. Team trust was measured by a preexisting tool developed by Costa & Anderson (2010) based on four dimensions of trust. Multiple regression analyses were performed to assess the strength of the relationship between PLC team functionality and team trust. Control factors such as team stability, years of teaching, and principal support were included in the analysis. Findings showed a positive, significant relationship between the five domains of PLC team functionality and the four dimensions of team trust. While individual relationships between domains of functionality and dimensions of trust varied, between 46%-60% of variability in team functionality was explained by team trust. This study demonstrates the importance of trust in collaborative efforts of PLC teams as well as highlights a more complex relationship between the two constructs than previously understood in the literature.

This dissertation explores the effects of mass-mediated taxpayer discourse on citizen perceptions of citizen-government relations in the context of the United States, a country where media and political discourse is heavily saturated with taxpayer talk. Specifically, this study considers two contrasting rhetorical constructions of the taxpayer. The first portrays the taxpayer as subordinate to the state by framing taxpaying as a citizen’s obligation through discussing it in legal and procedural terms of tax collection. The second constructs the taxpayer as a partner to which the government is accountable by emphasizing spending tax revenues and thus foregrounding the role of taxpaying in citizen’s claims for greater control over government actions. Drawing on a variety of perspectives from political science, mass communication, tax compliance research, history, and social cognition, I developed and tested two models to predict the effects of these contrasting constructions on two dimensions of citizen-government relations: power and trust. To test the models, I conducted two randomized controlled experiments: one that utilized a student sample recruited from a large undergraduate class at the University of Iowa (N=207), and one that replicated the results on a nationally representative adult sample (N=617). An additional experiment on a student sample (N=154) validated the experimental treatment. Taken together, the findings show that taxpayer discourse can affect citizen political judgement, but those effects do not operate through perceptions of power but instead through changes in political trust. When exposed to the tax-collection rhetoric, individuals in the nationally representative sample responded by deeming the government less trustworthy, which made them more motivated to monitor its actions. Notably, when participants were exposed to the public-spending frame, their reactions were statistically indistinguishable from those who did not read any taxpayer-related headlines at all. This suggest that in the context of the United States, where people are socialized into a public discourse that portrays the taxpayer as the ultimate sponsor and judge of government performance, this perspective can be internalized and become the default framework that citizens rely on in forming political judgement. However, when rhetorically denied this privileged position and placed in a subordinate role, citizens can push back by penalizing the government with greater distrust and reclaiming their right for citizen oversight. Importantly, the distrust-generating effect of the tax-collection frame is mitigated by the perceived scope of government reliance on taxes. The more reliant on taxpayer money participants perceived the state to be, the more trust this frame generated, which is consistent with a cognitive-dissonance explanation. Finally, changes in trust were triggered by taxpayer framing among actual taxpayers, leaving individuals with no actual experience unaffected. This study advances political communication research by refining the understanding of politically consequential citizen roles in communication scholarship to include that of the taxpayer as one of the most fiscally significant, personally relevant, media-salient, and — as this dissertation demonstrates — politically meaningful citizen roles. The project also contributes to political-science scholarship by suggesting that taxpayer discourse can prevent democratic backsliding in an established democracy and by making a case for considering the news media as an important element of the taxation-democratization nexus. In addition to scholarly significance, the dissertation has clear policy implications because it suggests new ways to communicate the benefits of democratic governance in more tangible, relatable terms of paying taxes and claiming greater accountability for government performance.

Collision warning systems represent a promising means to reduce rear-end crash involvement. However, these systems experience failures in the real-world that may promote driver distrust and diminish drivers' willingness to comply with warnings. Recent research suggests that not all false alarms (FAs) are detrimental to drivers. However, very few studies have examined how different alarms influence different driving populations. The purpose of this research was to examine how younger, middle-aged, and older drivers (with and without UFOV impairments) evaluated and responded to four different alarm contexts - false alarm (FA), nuisance alarm (NA), unnecessary alarm (UA) and true alarm (TA) - when they did and did not receive warnings. FA contexts represent out-of-path conflict scenarios where it is difficult for the driver to identify the source of the alarm. NA contexts represent out-of-path conflict scenarios that occur in a predictable manner that allows drivers to identify the source of the alarm. UA contexts are transitioning host conflict scenarios where the system issues an alert but the situation resolves itself before the driver needs to intervene. TA contexts represent in-host conflict scenarios where the situation requires the driver to intervene to avoid a collision. The results suggest that alarm context does matter. Compared to response data that differentiates FA and NA from UA and TA, subjective data shows greater sensitivity and differentiates between all four alarm contexts (FA Younger drivers indicated a high degree of confidence in their own ability across the different conditions. While they adopted a similar response pattern as middle-aged drivers during the TA contexts, these drivers responded less frequently than middle-aged and older drivers during the UA context. Diminished hazard perception ability and the tendency to consider these situations less hazardous likely account for the fewer responses made during these situations by younger drivers. Older drivers with and without UFOV impairments indicated similar hazard ratings for UA and TA contexts, yet drivers with UFOV impairments responded less frequently in both alarm contexts. Diminished hazard perception ability, slower simple response times, and degraded contrast sensitivity likely account for the fewer and slower responses. Interestingly older drivers with impairments did respond more frequently when warned during the TA context. They also rated FAs and NAs more positively than the other driver groups. The results of this study suggest applying signal detection theory without concern for the alarm context and driver characteristics is insufficient for understanding how different alarms influence operators and that subjective data can inform design. Researchers are encouraged to combine multiple perspectives that incorporate of both an engineering and human perspective.

This dissertation studies the factors that negatively impact the accuracy of the collaborative filtering recommendation systems based on nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF). The keystone in the recommendation system is the rating that expresses the user's opinion about an item. One of the most significant issues in the recommendation systems is the lack of ratings. This issue is called "cold-start" issue, which appears clearly with New-Users who did not rate any item and New-Items, which did not receive any rating. The traditional recommendation systems assume that users are independent and identically distributed and ignore the connections among users whereas the recommendation actually is a social activity. This dissertation aims to enhance NMF-based recommendation systems by utilizing the imputation method and limiting the errors that are introduced in the system. External information such as trust network and item categories are incorporated into NMF-based recommendation systems through the imputation. The proposed approaches impute various subsets of the missing ratings. The subsets are defined based on the total number of the ratings of the user or item before the imputation, such as impute the missing ratings of New-Users, New-Items, or cold-start users or items that suffer from the lack of the ratings. In addition, several factors are analyzed that affect the prediction accuracy when the imputation method is utilized with NMF-based recommendation systems. These factors include the total number of the ratings of the user or item before the imputation, the total number of imputed ratings for each user and item, the average of imputed rating values, and the value of imputed rating values. In addition, several strategies are applied to select the subset of missing ratings for the imputation that lead to increasing the prediction accuracy and limiting the imputation error. Moreover, a comparison is conducted with some popular methods that are in common with the proposed method in utilizing the imputation to handle the lack of ratings, but they differ in the source of the imputed ratings. Experiments on different large-size datasets are conducted to examine the proposed approaches and analyze the effects of the imputation on accuracy. Users and items are divided into three groups based on the total number of the ratings before the imputation is applied and their recommendation accuracy is calculated. The results show that the imputation enhances the recommendation system by capacitating the system to recommend items to New-Users, introduce New-Items to users, and increase the accuracy of the cold-start users and items. However, the analyzed factors play important roles in the recommendation accuracy and limit the error that is introduced from the imputation.

This study analyzed the perception of battered women on being able to trust another partner again and date after domestic violence. This study sample consisted of eight battered women over the age of eighteen. In analyzing the responses eight core themes emerged: trust, dating, beliefs, healthy coping, going back, overcoming, relationship, and feelings. The codes were grouped into categories that ranged from healthy traits to dating to negative traits to dating. Moreover, a theoretical statement was developed by the use of selective coding. Participants identified how past experiences with domestic violence affected them in a positive and negative way. It was found it is easier for women to trust another partner if they experienced domestic violence for less than ten years. Moreover, it was found it is hard for women to trust another partner if the experienced domestic violence for more than ten years.

This study presents findings on elementary teacher’s relationship with foster youth, whether teachers are able to use an empowerment approach to build trust and improve outcomes. This study was quantitative and measured the key variables through a descriptive design. Specifically using Qualtrics which tested the key variables of empowerment, trust, and improved outcomes. Also, Qualtrics described the findings through bar graphs and the researcher interpreted this through univariate statistics specifically. Significant findings were found towards teachers making a positive impact on foster youth.