Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-85).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 98 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-98).

The main purpose of this dissertation is to examine how Chilean municipalities have been affected by, and have responded to, the threat of competition for students under the Chilean voucher system, and to test whether between-district stratification has been a relevant or irrelevant outcome of such pressures. More specifically, this study analyzes which key municipal factors are associated with local public school enrollment gains, retention or losses under the voucher system. In addition, the purpose is to study the measures undertaken by some municipal public school officials and public school principals at the local level in Santiago de Chile, the Chilean capital city, in order to retain or attract students to their public-municipal schools. Main findings indicate that unfair competition between public and private-voucher sectors largely explains public-municipal enrollment losses and private-voucher enrollment gains experimented both in Santiago and the overall country. On the other hand, unfair competition between public school districts themselves largely explains differences on enrollment and stratification within the public sector. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates that the Chilean voucher system has not improved the educational opportunities of disadvantaged students within the city –and across the country as a whole- as school choice proponents claim vouchers will do. / text

The goal of this study was to learn how Mississippi’s society, culture, and politics influenced college choice for college bound African American women in Mississippi from 1962 to 2002. In this context, the researcher elected to interview mother and daughter pairs who attended college in Mississippi after James Meredith integrated the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in 1962. To achieve its goals, this study traced the political history of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, the enrollment patterns of African American women in Mississippi colleges, and captured, through individual interviews, the mothers’ and daughters’ motivating factors in choosing a college. This qualitative research design study compares and analyzes the differences in the mothers’ and daughters’ choices and illustrates how outside influences affect college choice. The researcher used archival records, focus groups, and individual interviews to capture the data. The common themes that emerged from this study for the mothers’ generation were the power of community capital, strong family ties, extreme poverty, and personal sacrifice. The common themes that emerged from this study for the daughters’ generation were the power of family capital and individual ambition, fueled by a desire for a comfortable life. Because of the intense nature of the individual interviews the researcher captured a glimpse into the participants’ thought process in choosing to go to college as well as choosing which college to attend. / text

The study examines whether different kinds of choices provided in assignment for students can promote students’ intrinsic motivation towards completing assignment and their learning performance in mathematics. A total of 55 primary 5 students were recruited in 2 schools for an after-school programme. The participants were randomly assigned to three treatment conditions: 1) personalization choice, 2) action choice, and 3) no-choice control condition. Results from planned contrast tests showed that provision of action choice improved students’ perception of choice (autonomy) in doing assignment. However, the positive effect of personalization choice and action choice on students’ perceived competence, intrinsic motivation and learning benefits cannot be concluded from the current findings. The limitations and practical implications of the study are discussed. / published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

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The aim of this thesis is to conduct a case study examining the intrusion of marketplace ideals on various aspects of everyday life. In this thesis, I provide a case study of a new business in San Francisco, ReservationHop, that transforms the previously first come, first serve restaurant reservation service into an auction style scalping (resell at a higher price) system, thereby affecting the distribution of an economic service, or good. In order to investigate this phenomenon, this thesis is organized into six main sections. First, I will provide a brief introduction to the thesis, presenting my aim and purpose in writing and why I believe that this is an important topic. I then introduce ReservationHop and describe the site and its business model, the controversy that it has evoked, and the app's creator Brian Mayer's attempts to defend the app's legitimacy. Thirdly, I will provide considerations in support of the ethical permissibility of the ReservationHop business model, using two neoclassical economic arguments: consumer choice theory and the Pareto-efficiency argument. Fourthly, I will counter these arguments, claiming that this service is not a Pareto optimal improvement because it involves deception, which is incompatible with genuine Pareto optimality. In the fifth section, I will introduce my main argument against ReservationHop in which I introduce the idea that there is something inherently wrong with the service even if its deceptive characteristics were corrected for. I argue that there should be "things that money cannot buy" because unfettered marketization erodes the nonmarket value of community, or commonality. In conclusion, this thesis argues that the intrusion of marketplace values on all aspects of society should be resisted, and that we must rethink the increased influence of marketization for it crowds out other important non-market values, e.g., our sense of community solidarity.

This research suggests that, because media choice is integral to the effectiveness of an advertising message, there is a need to compare the effects related to media choice. This paper establishes the need for a new way to evaluate comparative media effectiveness. Specifically, it provides a perspective regarding how media effectiveness is currently evaluated and indicates why the transformation of mass media requires a new model. A new conceptual model, The Advertising Receptivity Model, is proposed for this purpose. The results establish a relationship between the context of the media usage, the perception of advertising value, and receptivity to the advertising message. / text

This research examines the time used by teenagers, aged 16 to 19 years, the types of activities teenagers do, and the impact of internet usage on their non-fixed activities during weekdays. The data employed for this research is the 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS 2009). For this study, socio-demographic factors (such as age, gender, race, work status, immigrant status, number of individuals in the household, number of children in the household, number of workers in the household, household income, and others), non-fixed activities (at home, shopping, personal business, physical, recreational and social, meals, religious, and others), time spent on non-fixed activities, and internet use among teenagers were taken into consideration. The methodology in this research uses an ordered response model to analyze internet usage, and a Multiple Discrete Continuous Extreme Value model (MDCEV) to analyze the activity participation. The results show that individual and household demographic characteristics have an impact on internet usage, as well as, internet usage is found to have a significant impact on the activity participation behavior of teenagers. / text

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