Currently, there is a shortage of professors preparing personnel to teach in high need areas (e.g., special education, English language learners) at institutions of higher education (IHE). The purpose of the present study was to examine the motivations or influencers that impelled individuals to pursue careers in IHEs as professors in personnel preparation. Data were collected using Motivations for Choosing Academia as a Profession (MCAP) and a 10-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-10). Two hundred eighty-nine professors of education representing the four U.S. census regions participated in the present study. The MCAP is a 25-item instrument designed to measure retrospective motivation of faculty decisions to enter the professoriate. The development of the MCAP is described and an exploratory factor analysis was employed to examine the psychometric validity of the instrument. Three factors emerged and implications are discussed. Data were analyzed using logistic regression with the dichotomous outcome variable being the area of education in which the professor works (i.e., general or special education).

This study hypothesized a relationship between self-acceptance and acceptance by others. The hypothesis was that patients chosen frequently by other persons on a friendship criterion would have lower self-ideal, self-discrepancy scores than patients chosen infrequently by other persons on a friendship criterion. The study also hypothesized that depressed patients would have higher discrepancy scores than either the psychopathic or situational stress groups.

Research has suggested that memories for difficult or painful experiences seem related to a combination of the worst and most recent moments. This peak-end theory was tested in relation to an exercise task (eccentric quadriceps using a BIODEX machine) as well as a cognitive task (standardized quantitative test questions). For each type of task there were two trials: short and happy endings. The happy endings trial included the same task as the short trial with an additional 25% duration at a lesser intensity (80% of short task intensity). A 2 (task type) by 2 (trial type) repeated measures design was used. Participants made global ratings of difficulty immediately after each component, thus generating four ratings, and later indicated their preferences for hypothetical future trials. Results indicated support for the theory that the shorter trials are evaluated as more difficult, with the cognitive task being evaluated as more difficult overall than the exercise task. Preference scores, however, revealed a preference only for the happy endings cognitive task, with no preference indicated on the exercise task. Results confirm previous research in suggesting differences between judgements of tasks and future choices. However, confounds complicated interpretations, especially for the cognitive task. The most conservative interpretation of data suggests that in circumstances where "more is better," happy endings will result in more work with no higher level of discomfort. Implications for future research and applications of the theory are discussed.

Various constructs are related to predicting consumers' perceptions of brand extensions. Among these, three constructs, perceptions of perceived quality (PQ) associated with the parent brand, product category similarity (PCS) of an extension to its parent brand, and brand breadth (BB) of the parent, are central to many brand extension studies. The purpose of this study is to clarify the roles of these three constructs and to pit predictions from an alternative theoretical perspective — cognitive response theory — against predictions based on categorization theory.

This study considers the contested meaning of public education through a qualitative investigation of Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts, a charter elementary school in Richmond, Virginia. The central research question that guides this study is “How do parents construct the idea of public schools as they explain their choice of Patrick Henry Charter School?” To answer this question I conducted a constructivist inquiry that involved a series of 16 semi-structured interviews with a maximum variation sample of Patrick Henry parents concerning their ideas about the school and about public education. The analysis of these interviews led to a grounded theory of the parents’ ideas as well as a case report constructed from the categorized units of data that explores the core themes of the theory. This study also addresses two sub-questions: (1) “How do the parents’ ideas about public schools reflect the logics embedded in the larger policy discourses concerning charters and the reinvention of public education?” and (2) “How do the parents’ ideas about public schools reflect the local public discourse around the public-ness of the school?” To answer the first sub-question I use my review of literature to develop an understanding of the reform debates around charter schools and their relationship to the contested ideas of public education. To answer sub question two, I present an adapted constructivist qualitative analysis of the public discourse that surrounded the school from April 2007 – when the idea of the school was first proposed at a school board meeting – until December 2011 – a year and a half after the school opened its doors. To capture the public discourse I collected and analyzed articles, editorials and letters from six local print publications (newspapers, weekly magazines) as well as the public comment portion of the minutes from Richmond School Board meetings. This analysis resulted in the construction of two competing narratives about the school, the juxtaposition of which shed light on the how idea of public-ness was constructed in the public discourse.

The provision of key text reading lists relies on students to select one they will utilise in undertaking a course. In anatomy and physiology an array of texts exist providing lecturers with the task of deciding the most suitable for inclusion within this list, the final choice for a student to undertake. Little evidence was found to identify the decision-making a student undertook in selecting a text. Based on disparate theoretical concepts an initial development of a conceptual process framework followed to provide a basis from which to identify influences which impacted on the student decision-making process. Using a mixed methods design a survey of students (N=964) undertaking anatomy and physiology courses was conducted whose results, following analysis provided the focus for in depth interviews. These included students (n=15), lecturers (n=3) authors (n=5) and publishers (n=2). Thematic analysis of the transcripts identified four overarching themes these being the Perception of the Textbook, Choice of the Textbook, Mismatch of Perceived Needs and Place of the Textbook. The results suggested two main influences which impacted on the student when choosing a text, those of existing prior knowledge and recommendation. Without prior knowledge, comprehension and cognition of the text was difficult. Recommendation by a lecturer or reading list, a strong influence, saw students selecting a recommended text without considering their own needs leading to an inability to use this. Without knowledge and recommendation students utilised aesthetic preference and heuristics in selecting a text, with many selecting additional texts to assist in using recommended texts. The results led to the development of the conceptual process framework indicating choice was a complex process for the student. Selecting a text is complex and affected by numerous influences. The study highlights a process through which a student traverses as they undertake the selection of their text. The study conclusions have led to the development of the Process Framework for Text Selection providing a novel and coherent linking of established theoretical concepts.

Nowadays BE deals with many other issues besides loss aversion and the preference for fairness mentioned above. There are many works which examine such phenomena like the endowment effect, or the framing effect, the inequality aversion and the judgment choice discrepancy, the money illusion, or the mental accounting. This thesis will examine two of these topics: the discrepancy between choice and judgment and the inequality aversion. It will also try to prove that besides material payoffs there exist nonmaterial payoffs, which influence people's choices through their judgments and can be crucial in some situations, leading sometimes even to reversals in preferences.

This paper examines factors associated with awareness of the EU energy labels of household appliances and the factors associated with the choice of appliance energy class using a dataset of 2136 households in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania. The results for five major appliances indicate that household knowledge of energy use increases label awareness, while households with a large share of elderly decrease label awareness. Factors that influence awareness of energy labels have a limited impact on appliance energy class choice. Significant country differences also exist. Romania shows higher household propensities to be aware of the energy class of appliances than Czech Republic, while Bulgaria shows lower propensities of label awareness compared to the benchmark of Czech Republic.

This thesis concerns two-point sets, which are subsets of the real plane which intersect every line in exactly two points. The existence of two-point sets was first shown in 1914 by Mazukiewicz, and since this time, the properties of these objects have been of great intrigue to mathematicians working in both topology and set theory. Arguably, the most famous problem about two-point sets is concerned with their so-called "descriptive complexity"; it remains open, and it appears to be deep. An informal interpretation of the problem, which traces back at least to Erdos, is: The term "two-point" set can be defined in a way that it is easily understood by someone with only a limited amount of mathemat- ical training. Even so, how hard is it to construct a two-point set? Can one give an effective algorithm which describes precisely how to do so? More formally, Erdos wanted to know if there exists a two-point set which is a Borel subset of the plane. An essential tool in showing the existence of a two-point set is the Axiom of Choice, an axiom which is taken to be one of the basic truths of mathematics.

MA by course work and research report, Community-Counselling Psychology, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2010