Universal screening for behavior is the use of a measure of social, emotional or behavioral function across an entire population with a goal of preventing future difficulties by intervening with students identified by the screening protocol. Multiple screening procedures have been used, with most including behavior rating scales in the selection process. The purpose of the present research was to investigate two central questions related to the use of universal screeners for behavior in school settings: first, can scores on universal screeners be used as an outcome measure investigating program based interventions, and second, what evidence of teacher bias exists when an external criterion of behavior is included. The purpose of study one was to determine if differences in teacher-rated behavior could be detected between a sample of students that attended public preschool and a nonattending peer group matched for ethnicity, gender, and a gross measure of socioeconomic status (total n= 138). Results of Study One indicated no significant differences between preschool-attending and nonattending groups (p=.61) or between Hispanic and Caucasian participants. Limitations related to sampling and measurement were discussed. In study two, a best-evidence synthesis of peer-reviewed articles investigating teacher bias in behavior ratings of students was conducted. Strict inclusion criteria were chosen to allow for inferential judgment of teacher accuracy. Results of Study Two found a final total of 25 studies of teacher bias that suggested mixed evidence for bias due to student ethnicity or gender and stronger evidence for bias due to expectancies (disability label), teacher culture, unrelated behaviors (halo effects), and teacher training and experience. Limitations, implications for practice and directions of future research were discussed.

The concept of competence hypothesis identified by Heath and Tversky (1991) proposes that ambiguity aversion is affected by the subjective competence level of participants. When people feel knowledgeable or skillful in a field, they would rather bet on their own judgment even with uncertainty. However, when participants do not feel knowledgeable or skillful, they prefer betting on the unambiguous chance event. Therefore, the bias of ambiguity aversion is conditional on the subjective competence level of the participants. Our study selects managers of open and domestic stock type mutual funds to be study objects. There are 12 months during the study period, starting from April 2004 and ending in March 2005. In the first part of this paper, we investigate whether the competence effect influences professional managers¡¦ behaviors. We explore the relation between manager competence and mutual fund holding bias by conducting multiple regression analysis. Our study finds competence effect in the behaviors of mutual fund managers. A positive relation exists between manager competence and mutual fund holding electronic stocks bias. When manager competence is high, the mutual fund holdings in electronics stocks will be either more or less than the market. That is, weighting of holding electronics categorized stocks in mutual fund clearly deviate from the weighting of electronics categorized stocks in the market. However, when manager competence is not high, weighting of holding electronics categorized stocks in mutual fund follows that in the market. The other hypothesis proposes that manager competence is not relevant to the £] of mutual fund portfolio. Secondly, we explore the factors that affect manager competence by conducting logistic regression analysis. Among the five variables which may affect mutual fund manager competence, we find ¡§fund size¡¨ the only factor that is positively relevant to mutual fund manager competence. In other words, the larger the mutual funds, the more likely that managers will perceive themselves as skillful and knowledgeable. The other four variables are the manager¡¦s previous fund management experience, educational level, gender, and performance of mutual fund in the past year. They are not related to competence.

Given the distribution and probable evolutionary history of the Peromyscus maniculatus species group, an interspecific comparison of microsatellite variation among these species would be logically based (at least initially) on primers isolated from the genome of a geographically central population of P. maniculatus. Additionally, as the species in the group are recently diverged, reasonably informative microsatellite data are likely to require analysis of a rapid evolving category of microsatellite loci. The initial phase of this research involved the isolation, characterization and assessment of variation for a panel of DNA microsatellites containing perfect dinucleotide repeats from a geographically central population of P. maniculatus. Theoretical predictions and empirical studies indicate that phylogenetic analyses based on microsatellite primers isolated from a focal species may be subject to ascertainment biases that can be expected to degrade the efficacy of this approach with increasing phylogenetic depth between the species from which the microsatellites were isolated and those to which these loci are being compared. Results of an analysis of allelic variation at 12 pure, dinucleotide microsatellite loci (isolated from P. maniculatus) are reported for samples of all species in the P. maniculatus species group and the sister taxon P. leucopus. Examined for the species in the P. maniculatus species group for which there is an a priori highly corroborated phylogeny, evidence of ascertainment bias was apparent only for one locus that was unique to P. maniculatus. Genealogical analyses of the data over all loci yielded inferred relationships that were entirely concordant with the a priori corroborated phylogeny for P. maniculatus, P. keeni, P. polionotus, P. melanotis and P. leucopus. Genealogical analyses of the previously unresolved relationships of P. keeni and P. sejugis consistently placed these as an independent sister-group between P. maniculatus and P. polionotus. The geographically improbable sister-group association of P. keeni and P. sejugis may be the result of an historical ancestral continuity or may reflect large-scale lineage sorting rather than true phylogenetic propinquity. These data suggest that, given the choice of an appropriate focal species, even relatively small sets of pure dinucleotide microsatellites can provide reliable population genetic and systematic implications for taxa with divergence times dating to the Pleistocene.

The thesis consists of three essays in development and political economics. Political Connection, Government Patronage and Firm Performance: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Firms The paper tests whether politically connected firms receive preferential favor from the government, as measured by state capital investment from the central government and subsidies. My results suggest that firms connected with one more top leader from the State Council receive 9.4 percent more subsidies, firms connected with one more leader who holds positions on both the Central Committee and the State Council obtain 23 percent more state capital and then have a 2 percentage point higher product markup. When there is extra state capital due to political connections, other domestic capital is crowded out. The heterogeneous effects find that firms with more employees, but lower sales and less profit tend to receive more state capital if equally connected, while firms with higher sales tend to obtain more subsidies. This additional state capital and these subsidies do not seem to improve the firm's performance. The Determinants of Media Bias in China We measure and investigate the determinants of political control of newspapers in China. We find that more strictly politically controlled newspapers cover disasters and corruption more than their commercial competitors, most likely in order to monitor lower level officials. We also find that they cover leaders and the official news agency Xinhua to a larger extent. We find that in the cross section, the political control correlates negatively with GDP per capita and population size, but there is no time trend in the political control of Chinese newspapers in the 2000s. Finally, we analyze the effect of a reform to close down all county papers in 2003. The reduced competition significantly affected the degree of political control of the remaining papers. Chinese Microblogs and Drug Quality This paper examines the impact of the introduction of Sina Weibo, the most popular microblog in China, on the quality of drugs on the market. I find that the number of bad drugs is decreasing in Sina Weibo use: if the Sina Weibo use is doubled, the number of bad drugs found will be reduced by 21 percent. I show that the reduction of bad drugs is driven by two mechanisms: Sina Weibo induces more effort from the Drug Administration and it deters the production of bad drugs. The results suggest that microblogs can play an important role in monitoring both the public and the private sectors, especially in a context with media censorship.

It has been suggested that depressed individuals have difficulties decoding emotional facial expressions in others contributing to a negative cycle of interpersonal difficulties. Some studies have demonstrated global deficits in the processing of emotional facial expressions compared to non-depressed participants, whereas others have noted differences for specific emotions. Methodological issues, including the operationalization of accuracy and bias and the examination of a limited range of emotion and intensity, can partially explain the mixed findings. The aim of the current study was to examine differences in accuracy in the detection of emotional facial expressions in participants with MDD (currently depressed, partially remitted, and those with a lifetime history of MDD) and non-depressed comparisons. Methodological limitations of previous studies were addressed by: (a) using the unbiased hit rate (Wagner, 1993), which is a more precise measure of accuracy for specific emotion, (b) using a more precise measure of judgment bias, taking into account the overuse or underuse of specific emotion categories, (c) including the six basic emotions, and (d) incorporating expressions ranging from 20%-100% intensity. Of secondary interest was to determine whether transient mood state is predictive of accuracy scores regardless of diagnostic status. Thirty-seven depressed and 34 non-depressed participants recruited from the ROHCG Mood Disorders program and the University of Ottawa took part in this study. Clinical status was assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM-IV (SCID-IV) and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). Participants also completed the Profile of Mood States-Bipolar (POMS-BI) form to assess mood state at the time of testing. The facial recognition task consisted of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise at 20%-100% intensity, presented for 500 ms. Participants pressed a computer key to identify the emotion that was presented. Results indicated that both groups of depressed participants were more accurate than non-depressed participants in detecting anger at 20% intensity. Depressed participants also showed a bias away from surprise. Group differences at high intensity were non-significant, however, participants with current depression and partial remission showed a bias towards anger at 50% intensity. Regression analyses were performed using the POMS-Agreeable Hostile (POMS-AH) and POMS-Elated Depressed (POMS-ED) scales to determine whether mood state was predictive of accuracy in the detection of anger and sadness. Regression models predicting accuracy were non-significant. Results of this study are considered in the context of cognitive and cognitive-interpersonal theories of MDD.

We derive analytic expressions for the biases, to O(n^(-1)) of the maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters of the generalized Rayleigh distribution family. Using these expressions to bias-correct the estimators is found to be extremely effective in terms of bias reduction, and generally results in a small reduction in relative mean squared error. In general, the analytic bias-corrected estimators are also found to be superior to the alternative of bias-correction via the bootstrap. / Graduate

Judges strive to achieve both balance and fairness in their rulings and courtrooms. When either of these is compromised, or when judicial discretion appears to be handed down or enforced in random or capricious ways, then bias is present. Bias is unavoidable, because judges are human, they have certain preferences, and lawyers do not always know how to get familiar with judges' style and previous rulings. Lawyers strive to win their cases by persuading judges that their argument is better than opposing counsel, and deserves merit. Understanding rhetoric, the history and art of persuasion that goes back to Ancient Greece and Rome, gives lawyers the strategies they need to communicate effectively with judges and win cases, but rhetoric is not taught in law schools. My thesis explores the history and magnitude of the problem of bias in bench trials, and offers discussion of how rhetoric can be used ethically by both judges and lawyers. I examine how the judicial system works and conclude with ideas for dealing with bias. In studying bias, I have drawn on textual sources including legal journals, books written by lawyers and judges, accounts of legal and judicial history, materials from political science, rhetoric and communication, current events and news reports, and observed judges on popular reality television programs and in municipal courtrooms.

What is the relationship between a country specific image and the image of products made in that country? What is the role of country image in consumers' product valuations? While many of previous studies have examined the COO effects on consumers' overall quality perceptions of products, little work has been done on investigating the relationship between a country specific image, its product image, and consumers' purchase willingness. A prototype car product, with fictitious country of origin from Germany, Italy, Korea and Malaysia, was developed for investigating consumers' perceptions, and for defining the role of country image in consumers product evaluations. In order to generalise research findings to the global context, tests with the questionnaires are conducted from 320 undergraduate students in four countries (United Kingdom, United States, Hong Kong, and Australia). A review of the prior literature on country of origin effects, product-country images, and models of belief-attitude provided two constructs of country of origin (COO) and country of target (COT) as direction of this study. Finally, the literature review enabled the development of three main questions as basis of five hypotheses as follows; (a) Are there significant differences between consumer groups' attitudes toward a specific country and its prototype car products? (b) Are there significant differences between consumer groups' purchase willingness toward products from a specific country? (c) What is the role of country image in consumers' product evaluations? Three sets of hypotheses were tested in this study which were concerned with country image, product image, and purchase willingness as sub-constructs of COO and COT. Two statistical techniques were used to analyse the data - multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). This study contributes to the body of knowledge on country of origin in a number of specific ways: first, prototypes, rather than existing product are employed as stimuli; second, the construct of country of target (COT) was introduced and was conceptualised as a complement to that of country of origin (COO); and third, the interaction between these three elements is explored. Eventually, the finding of this research confirmed that the COT construct and its effects are potentially very important to the study of the role of country image and to business people exporting products from a particular COO.

Zugl.: Münster (Westfalen), Univ., Diss., 2004 u.d.T.: Priester, Timo: Der Einfluss strukturorientierter Variablen auf die Behaltbarkeit von schriftlichem Textmaterial und mündlich ausgetauschten Informationen

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Carolyn F. Furlow, committee chair; Phillip Gagne, T. Chris Oshima, Christopher Domaleski, committee members. Electronic text (113 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 24, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-101).