Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Examines the historiographical and practical problems of using newspapers in historical research. Studies the methods of different types of professional and non-professional historians, to evaluate the value of newspapers as historical documents and the problems particular to them. Examines the difficulties associated with newspapers in library collections from both the perspectives of newspaper users and custodians. Seeks to provide recommendations for both groups to facilitate the use of newspapers. The research adopted essentially qualitative methods. Using questionnaires and interviews, the opinions and experiences of historians in Wales were studied. Case studies of newspaper collections in Wales were undertaken to examine current policies and strategies at a local level. The research was also undertaken with collaboration from the British Library Newspaper Library and with specific reference to the work of the NEWSPLAN project. Concludes that newspapers are an important source for all manner of historical enquiries, but that historians often require further guidance in order to search, use and evaluate them. Different patterns of use were observed among different types of historians. Also suggests that newspapers are unlike other historical documents, because of their nature and role in society. Specific techniques are provided to assist the historian using newspapers. The use of newspapers is also shaped by the policies and strategies of both local and national newspaper collections. Thus, guidelines and recommendations are provided to assist these organisations. Further work is urged, to understand the needs of historians and the specific problems that newspapers present, following the five million pound Heritage Lottery Fund Award for the NEWSPLAN project in March 1999.

Recent research has shown that language is sensitive to probabilities and a whole host of multivariate conditioning factors. However, most of the research in this arena centres on the grammar of English, and, as yet, there is no statistical modelling on the grammar of Latin, studies of which have to date been largely philological. The rise in advanced statistical methodologies allows us to capture the underlying structure of the rich datasets which this corpus only language can potentially offer. This thesis intends to remedy this deficit by applying probabilistic and multivariate models to a specific case study, namely the alternation of word order in Latin participle auxiliary clusters (pacs), which alternate between participle-auxiliary order, as in mortuus est ‘dead is’ and est mortuus ‘is dead’. The broad research questions to be explored in this thesis are the following: (i) To what extent are probabilistic models useful and reflective of Latin syntax variation phenomena?, (ii) What are the most useful statistical models to use?, (iii) What types of linguistic variables influence variation, (iv) What theoretical implications and explanations do the statistical models suggest?Against this backdrop, a dataset of 2409 pac observations are extracted from Late Re- publican texts of the first century bc. The dataset is annotated for an “information space” of thirty-three predictor variables from various levels of linguistics: text and lemma-based variability, prosody and phonology, grammar, semantics and pragmatics, and usage-based features such as frequency. The study exploits such statistical tools as generalized linear models and multilevel generalized linear models for the regression modelling of the binary categorical outcome. However, because of the potential collinearity, and the many predictor terms, amongst other issues, the use of these models to assess the joint effect of all predictors is particularly problematic. As such, the new statistical toolkit of random forests is utilized for evaluating the relative contribution of each predictor. Overall, it is found that Latin is indeed probabilistic in its grammar, and the condition- ing factors that govern it are spread widely throughout the language space. It is also noted that probabilistic models, such as the ones used in this study, have practical applications in traditional areas of philology, including textual criticism and literary stylistics.

This research explored the potential influences on team functioning, from the perspective of adult attachment theory. Attachment styles are seen to reflect internal working models of self, others, and relationships, and influence individuals’ motivations, abilities, and perceptions as regards relationships. The research question explored what the role and influence of an individual’s global and team attachment style may have upon an individual’s experience of a work team. It sought to explain engagement with an individual’s work team, what is the subsequent influence of this on performance and how attachment style contributes to this. The key issues of Team Member Exchange and Team Identification were explored as areas of team functioning. These are the variables used to study and understand an individual’s team experiences, their engagement with the team, and the relationship with their performance ratings. The research found that both adult global and team attachment styles were negatively associated with Team Member Exchange (TMX), Team Identification, job satisfaction, performance ratings and Organisational Citizenship Behaviours (OCB). Using mediation analysis, team avoidant attachment was consistently and strongly associated with the study’s dependent variables and emerged as the key explanatory variable in this research. When all the attachment styles were analysed simultaneously to determine the unique effects of each attachment style, team avoidance style was the most useful in understanding both TMX and Team Identification, job satisfaction, OCB and performance measures. Those with avoidant team attachment styles felt that the experience of team was negative with lower TMX and Team Identification reported. The research has added new insights to the team and attachment literature with the important contribution of team avoidance attachment to TMX and Team Identification.

With ad-hoc application of the traditional element of marketing failing to sustainably cushion institutions against growing competition, universities are frantically searching for ways to differentiate themselves in the long term. This study ascertains the applicability of five empirically established brand equity constructs to Ghana’s university industry. It is underpinned by a pragmatist philosophy - an objective-driven blend between the ontological and epistemological philosophical positions, and adopts a mixed-methods paradigm that combines qualitative and quantitative survey methods of data collection and analysis. For the qualitative part, 22 valid face-to-face in-depth interviews with undergraduate students selected from four universities were used while the quantitative study used 625 self-administered questionnaires from undergraduate students from twelve universities. Thematic analysis was used for the qualitative data while for the quantitative data, the structural equation modelling technique of partial least squares (PLS) was employed to ascertain relationships between the five independent student-based brand equity (SBBE) constructs on one hand, and students’ university brand preference (SUBP) as a dependent variable, on the other. Results of the analysis indicate a positive relationship between most of the SBBE constructs studied and university preference in Ghana. Four SBBE dimensions namely; university institutional reputation (UIR), university institutional image (UII), university graduate employability (UGE) and perceived institutional service quality (PISQ) recorded significant positive relationships with students’ university preference (SUP). Positive relationships were also obtained between university image and university reputation, university identity and university reputation, as well as between perceived institutional service quality and graduate employability. On the contrary, an insignificant relationship was obtained between university institutional identity (UI) and students’ university preference. The correlation analysis also indicates significant positive relationships among all the independent SBBE variables. Cumulatively, the results indicate that the SBBE concept is applicable to Ghana’s university context as the SBBE constructs and university preference are positively related. The prevalence of reputation, image, graduate employability and perceived institutional service quality in the research findings has implications for policy in the university sector. Also worthy of note is the significant positive relationship obtained between perceived institutional service quality and graduate employability; as well as between university institution identity, university institution image and university institution reputation. Much of the existing academic work on higher education branding has concentrated on brand equity’s antecedents and consequences. This study links empirically proven antecedents of university brand equity to university preference. Also, most of existing empirical research on brand equity in the university sector has focused on developed countries whose circumstances are fundamentally different from those of developing economies. This study is a novelty in the sub-Saharan African context where student-focused university branding is uncommon; and so comes as a significant contribution from Ghana, to the growing worldwide debate on university branding. While contributing a survey instrument that enhances SBBE research methodology, theoretically, the unique blend of SBBE constructs employed is unprecedented. Notwithstanding some limitations identified, this study presents an empirical model that stands to guide university management in judiciously dispensing scarce resources.

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / Societies today are rapidly expanding, both demographically and politically, thereby causing adolescents who are HIV positive to be faced with multifaceted challenges. For these societal demands, young people need to acquire the relevant skills. The life skills approach has been found to improve adolescent changes by building skills that are necessary components of healthy development and enables adolescents to deal with life challenges. Evidence suggests that the life skills approach promotes social, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral competencies that are important in decreasing negative or high-risk behaviours (Pearlstein et al.,2013, Mellins et al.,2012) . The aim of this research was to evaluate the life skills programme utilised by social workers, social auxiliary workers and community workers at an NGO that deals with HIV positive adolescents.

The main goal of this dissertation is to design and to calculate chosen parts of a crab of a foundry travelling crane according to assigned parameters. The foundry crane provides transport of a casting ladle, which is hanged with a girder on a double hook of the main stroke. Except the main travel, the crane crab includes more an auxiliary stroke. The whole work is divided to two parts. The first part (calculating) is aimed mainly to calculation of both strokes and a travel. The second one (drawing) contains a drawing of the crane crab and drawings of a rope drum of the main stroke.

This dissertation examined the relationship of student textbook purchasing practices to student success and satisfaction in selected general education undergraduate courses at a Florida public community college. The study utilized secondary data sources, specifically bookstore purchasing data, student records, and student satisfaction survey results. Descriptive statistics and ANOVA were used to determine relationships. Seven specific research questions were answered, and statistically significant results were identified as a result of the data analysis. The results indicated that there was a relationship between the type of textbook/course material purchased or rented and a student’s final grade in a course. There was also a relationship between digital media textbooks/course materials and lower course satisfaction. When reviewing when students elected not to purchase any textbook/course material for a course that required one, those students reflected lower course grades than students that had access to the textbook/course material in some capacity. When students were provided with an option for their textbook/course material media type, traditional textbooks (paperback or hardcover print) were the most frequently selected. Finally, the results indicated that there was a relationship between higher priced textbooks/course materials and lower grades, when compared to lower priced textbooks/course materials, and course satisfaction scores also reflected lower scores with higher priced textbooks/course materials.

Recently, schema matching has found considerable interest in both research and practice. Determining matching components of database or XML schemas is needed in many applications, e.g. for E-business and data integration. Various schema matching systems have been developed to solve the problem semi-automatically. While there have been some evaluations, the overall effectiveness of currently available automatic schema matching systems is largely unclear. This is because the evaluations were conducted in diverse ways making it difficult to assess the effectiveness of each single system, let alone to compare their effectiveness. In this paper we survey recently published schema matching evaluations. For this purpose, we introduce the major criteria that influence the effectiveness of a schema matching approach and use these criteria to compare the various systems. Based on our observations, we discuss the requirements for future match implementations and evaluations.

Heinrich Schenker's concept of the auxiliary cadence can be considered as a middleground manifestation of the Ursatz; his definition of the auxiliary cadence caters only to tonal compositions with a single background tonic, such as Brahms's songs. However, there exist compositions in which the a single background tonic cannot be easily ascertained. Such unorthodox compositions, in fact, can be found even prior to Brahms's songs. In such cases, although the opening and closing tonics are different and are often categorized as large-scale auxiliary cadence structured compositions, they do not operate within the single-tonic based tonal paradigm upon which Schenker formed his idea of the auxiliary cadence. Such compositions may be approached as a novel type of auxiliary cadence and described as "process-driven." The thesis presents and contrasts examples of both types of auxiliary cadences in songs by Schubert, Brahms, and Berg.