In exploring the role of social influences in the development of the self, the current study evaluated whether young adults use social comparisons in developing their hoped-for possible selves and, if so, whether their developmental process correlates with self-regulatory processes and positive mental health outcomes. The current study found the following: (1) the domains of hoped-for possible selves among young adults were related to the gender of the social comparison target, (2) the direction of young adults’ social comparison processes (upward or downward) did not significantly influence self-regulatory processes (self-efficacy and outcome expectancy) toward achieving their hoped-for possible selves, (3) strong masculine gender identification related to greater outcome expectancy, while strong feminine gender identification related to both greater self-efficacy and outcome expectancy, and (4) self-efficacy related to less state anxiety, trait anxiety, and depression, while outcome expectancy related only to less trait anxiety. Males and females were found to use traditional gender role identification in forming their hoped-for possible selves.

This study of the Euclidean N-space looks at some definitions and their characteristics, some comparisons, boundedness and compactness, and transformations and mappings.

Films of three depress ed persons, one manic, and one normal individual were analyzed frame-by-frame to determine body activity rates. Speech rates were also determined. It was found that the manic had the highest activity rate, followed by the normal comparison, and with the depressed patients having the lowest activity rates. The depressed subjects also had lower speech rates than did the normal or the manic subjects. The term 'psychomotor retardation 1 is called into question, as the frequency distributions of movement durations were similar for all subjects. Implications for treatment and for development are also discussed.

<p>Historically, music theorists have claimed that the major triad functions as a strong instantiator of key, and that each of its inversions are harmonically equivalent. To examine these assumptions, subjects were tested with the Method of Paired Comparisons, and asked to judge the similarity of root, first inversion, and second inversion major triads drawn from keys of different degrees of musical relatedness. In Experiment 1, where triads were built on the tonics of two maximally-related keys (A and E major), only professional musicians demonstrated a separation of the triads on the basis of key, indicating that inversions of triads built on the same root-note were perceived as sounding similar to one another. The majority of moderately trained and inexperienced subjects tended to use a pitch-height strategy, in which triads containing upper notes that were close in absolute frequency were judged as sounding similar to one another. In Experiment 2, where triads were also included from a distantly related key (Bb major), the majority of professional musicians continued to group all triads on the basis of key, while some moderately-trained subjects confused the maximally-related keys, but perceived them as distinct from the more distant key. Other moderately-trained and musically-inexperienced subjects used a pitch·height strategy for judging similarity. In Experiments 3 and 4, chords were built on seven different rootnotes moving counterclockwise and clockwise, respectively, from a constant standard chord on the Circle of Fifths. The professional and moderately trained subjects tested did not show an especially strong tendency to judge chord similarity on the basis of musical key in either experiment. Inversion equivalence was demonstrated in each of these four experiments by subjects who judged triads built on the same root-note as sounding similar to one another. In Experiment 5, where seven Shepard chords (chords built to obscure pitch-height and inversion cues) were presented to only moderately-trained subjects, similarity judgements now appeared to be based on key. Conclusions are made regarding musical representation in a form described by the theoretic Circle of Fifths in musically-trained individuals.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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<p>Meta-analysis is a method of synthesizing results of different studies conducted to answer a specific question. Meta-analysis applications have been published in a wide range of disciplines including medicine, education, psychology and many others. However, for many years, only pair-wise and direct comparisons have been made using standard meta-analysis methods. It is only recently that network meta-analysis emerged enabling the comparison of multiple treatments based on estimates from different studies. With network meta-analysis, the relative efficacy (or safety) of a particular intervention versus competing interventions can be obtained even in the absence of head-to-head evidence via a common comparator.</p> <p>An increasing number of methodologies related to network meta-analysis, assessments of underlying assumptions, and strategies for presentation of results have been proposed by several researchers. But only few simulation studies have been done to investigate different characteristics of this emerging statistical method. Hierarchical Bayesian meta-analysis model is commonly used in network meta-analysis to estimate effect of each intervention relative to every other. This model facilitates the calculation of the rank probabilities of a set of alternative treatments. However, various factors can determine the performance of the model which needs to be considered before using results for decision.</p> <p>This project aimed to investigate how the Bayesian hierarchical model estimates the rank probability of the best overall most effective treatment (i.e., the treatment ranked first) under different scenarios for modelling a binary outcome. Different network geometries, numbers of studies per comparison, sets of probabilities of success for treatments and sample sizes were investigated in our simulation study for binary outcome.</p> <p>Our simulation study showed that the estimates of treatments under consideration can be affected by network structures. Similar geometries affect the estimate in similar ways. Unbalanced number of studies per comparison influenced estimates of treatments in the geometries we considered. When a superior treatment is involved in the network, the hierarchical Bayesian mixed treatment model correctly identified it regardless of network patterns, number of studies and individual study sample size.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

I. A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Tournaments. A paired-comparison experiment involving t treatments is analogous to a tournament with t players. A balanced experiment, in which every possible pair occurs once per replication, is the counterpart of a round robin tournament. When the objective is to pick the best treatment, the balanced design may prove to be more expensive than necessary. The knock-out tournament has been suggested as an alternative requiring fewer units of each treatment per replication. In this paper round robin, replicated knock-out, and double elimination tournaments are investigated for their effectiveness in selecting the best one or tour players. Effectiveness is gauged in terms of the two criteria (a) the probability that the best player wins and (b) the expected number of games. For general values of the parameters involved, expressions are derived for the evaluation of the criteria. Comparisons are made on the basis of series of assigned parameter values. Possibilities for the extension of the study are briefly discussed. II. Ties in Paired-Comparison Experiments. In making paired comparisons a judge frequently is unable to express a real preference in a number of the pairs he judges. In spite of this, some or the methods in current use do not permit the judge to declare a tie. In other methods tied observations are either ignored or divided equally or randomly between the tied members. It appears that there is a need, at least in the estimation of response-scale values, for a method which takes tied observations into account. In the Thurstone-Mosteller method the standardized distribution of the difference of two stimulus responses is normal with unit variance and mean equal to the difference or the two mean stimulus responses. In prohibiting ties the assumption is in effect made that all differences, however small, are perceptible to the judge. In this paper the assumption is made that a tie will occur whenever the difference between the judge's responses to the two stimuli lie below a certain threshold, i.e. if the difference lies between -t and t the judge will declare a tie. The parameter t and the mean stimulus responses are estimated by least squares. To overcome a difficulty presented by correlated data, an angular response law is postulated for the response-scale differences. In the resulting transformed data non-homogeneity of variances is encountered. In effecting a weighted solution, weights are first determined by using a preliminary unweighted analysis, and an iterative procedure is proposed. Large-sample variances and covariances of the estimates are obtained. A test of the validity of the model is described. A computational procedure is set up, and exemplified through application to experimental data. / Ph. D.

New methods for testing hypotheses in paired-comparison experiments are presented in this dissertation. The methods are developed on the basis of a very general mathematical model and they are, in general, quite easy to employ. Two tests of the null hypothesis that all treatments have equal stimuli, against its general alternative, are proposed. One test is for the case in which it is assumed prior to the experiment that no interaction will take place between repetitions and preference probabilities (the probabilities of the possible comparison preferences). The other test is for the case in which the above assumption cannot be made. The number of times a treatment is preferred is called its score. For the “no interaction" case, the test procedure is based on a test statistic that is a function D of the corrected sum of squares of the treatment scores. In the other case, the value of D is calculated for each group of homogeneous repetitions and then the values are summed to give the new test statistic. It is established that a X²-approximation may be used to determine the critical value of the test statistic for experiments outside the range of the tabled distributions. This test procedure is shown to be simpler than other approximate tests and, in general, at least as accurate with respect to errors of the first kind. It is shown that the two test methods discussed above may be extended to ranking experiments in balanced incomplete block designs with more than two treatments per block. To test the null hypothesis of no interaction between preference probabilities and repetitions, against its general alternative, a test method based on the theory of X² homogeneity tests is introduced. Means are presented for testing whether (1) a particular treatment is better than the average of the treatment stimuli; (2) two particular treatment stimuli are not equal; and (3) the treatment receiving the highest score is better than the average. The three test procedures are based essentially on the binomial distribution of the treatment scores under the null hypothesis. In each case, the test procedure is conservative. A procedure analogous to Tukey's test based on allowances is developed to test the null hypothesis of equal treatment stimuli and to separate the significantly different treatment scores when it rejects the null hypothesis. A method for judging contrasts of treatment scores similar to Scheffe's (1953) method for judging contrasts in the analysis of variance is proposed. The test method based on D, mentioned earlier, is used in place of the F-test employed in the Scheffe method. The use of paired-comparison experiments to test factorial effects is discussed and a test method based on orthogonal contrasts of the treatment scores is suggested. Because of correlations that arise, it is necessary to restrict this method to cases in which the only factors that are allowed to appear at more than two levels are those that will not interact with the other factors in the experiment. The test methods are illustrated through application on the data from two paired-comparison experiments. / Ph. D.

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