Den föreliggande studien syftade till att undersöka hur förövares- samt brottsoffers könstillhörighet samvarierar med strafflängd för individer dömda för grov misshandel.  Granskning av domar efter lagändringen den första juli 2017 där grov misshandel var det primära brottet genomfördes för att samla in data för jämförelse mellan män och kvinnor som förövare samt brottsoffer. Totalt användes 100 domar till analyserna med 61 manliga och 39 kvinnliga förövare. Det översiktliga resultatet indikerade att strafflängd inte samvarierade med vare sig förövarens eller brottsoffrets könstillhörighet när dessa undersöktes separat. Det återfanns däremot en signifikant samvariation för sammansättningarna av förövarens och offrets könstillhörighet och strafflängd. Skillnad återfanns endast mellan gruppen med kvinnliga förövare och manliga offer och gruppen med kvinnliga förövare och kvinnliga offer. Vid stratifiering för om fler brott än grov misshandel har påverkat straffvärdet samt för om förövaren tidigare var dömd återstod däremot inte denna skillnad. Resultatet diskuterades utifrån tidigare forskning samt teorierna Focal concerns och Paternalism/Chivalry theory, med fokus på grov misshandel som ett könsnormativt brott samt de metodologiska begränsningarna med den föreliggande studien. / The present study aimed to examine how the gender of perpetrators and victims of aggravated assault relates to the length of prison sentences. Data was collected to compare male and female perpetrators and victims from sentences where aggravated assault was the primary offense, after the change in legislation the first of July 2017. A total of 100 cases were included in the analysis with 61 male and 39 female perpetrators. In summary the result indicated that the length of the prison sentence did not relate to the gender of perpetrators or victims when examined separately. However, a significant result was found between perpetrator and victim gender constitution and the length of sentences. The difference was only found between the group with female perpetrators and male victims and the group with female perpetrators and female victims. The effect did not remain when stratifications were made regarding additional crimes besides aggravated assault affecting sentencing length and for prior convictions. The results are discussed in view of prior research, Focal concerns and Chivalry/Paternalism theory, with focus on aggravated assault as a gender normative crime together with the methodological limitations of the current study.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most rapidly evolving technologies aroundthe globe that has changed the way people live due to the benefits that comes with itsadoption. However, they have been associated with privacy and security risks. Witha focus on technical mechanisms and a lack of attention to consumer concerns over along time, it is unsurprising that manufacturers lack an understanding of consumersecurity and privacy concerns. While there has been significant empirical researchwarranting consumer concerns, their perceptions remain afoot.The purpose of this study is to understand the consumer privacy and securityperceptions associated with adoption of IoT devices within a smart home. Without an understanding of the consumer perceptions on privacy and security issues, manu-facturers may not address these issues which may hinder the adoption of IoT. While a significant number of studies have shown the privacy and security issues surrounding IoT devices, they have only extended to technical issues, mostly from the manufac-turer’s perspective. Since security is a complex issue involving several stakeholders, these studies cannot be applied from a consumer perspective.In this study we adopt an interpretive philosophical orientation and a qualitativeapproach. In depth interviews are used to collect data from smart homeowners,investigating their perceptions of smart home privacy issues. We have identified threesignificant recurring themes that need to be addressed: ethical and regulatory issues,information control and ownership, and technology design issues.

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Master of Science / Food Science Institute,Human Nutrition / Valentina M. Remig / Foodborne illness is a serious health problem in the United States, and especially in the mature adult population. This research examined food safety knowledge of mature Kansans(aged 55 years and older) in three important constructs (handwashing, food handling, and food preparation), their knowledge of foodborne illness symptoms, and their food safety concerns while eating away from home. One-hundred and forty participants completed a self-administered questionnaire containing ten food safety knowledge questions representing sixty answer options. Replies to those questions were compared by age, gender, geographic location,and educational attainment. Results indicated that geographic location was statistically significantly related to food safety knowledge; however, age, gender, and education had little to moderate association. Additional findings revealed food safety knowledge was not associated with participants’ level of food safety concern while eating away from home. In conclusion, the findings revealed that mature Kansans possessed general food safety knowledge; however, some responses indicated mature adults did not fully understand certain food safety protocols. Areas identified as needing further attention included appropriate hand drying and surface cleaning, safe food and refrigerator temperatures, proper thawing practices, as well as safe leftover and melon preparation.

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is considered a strong predictor of suicidal behavior, although the exact relationship between NSSI and suicide is not clear. Several factors have been suggested in previous research, including attitudes toward one’s own body, thoughts and beliefs regarding death and suicide, and the ability to cause physical harm to oneself. In the current study, the researcher obtained data from 285 young adult participants who reported a history of NSSI. Two multiple mediation models were tested in which body protection, suicide-related concerns, and acquired capability for suicide were examined as mediators of the relationship between NSSI and suicide attempt frequency. The first model, in which the predictor was NSSI frequency, was not supported. The second model, in which the predictor was NSSI versatility of methods, was partially supported; the only significant mediator was suicide-related concerns. These results add to the literature regarding the relationship between NSSI and suicide.

Reuse of software designs, experience and components is essential to making substantial improvements in software productivity, development cost, and quality. However, the many facets of reuse are still rarely used in the various phases of the software development lifecycle because of a lack of adequate theories, processes, and tools to support consistent application of reuse concepts. There is a need for approaches including definitions, models and properties of reuse that would provide explicit guidance to a software development team in applying reuse. In particular there is a need to provide abstractions that clearly separate the various functional concerns addressed in a software system. Separating concerns simplifies the identification of the software components that can benefit from reuse and can provide guidance on how reuse may be applied. In this thesis we present an extended model related to the separation of concerns in object-oriented design. The model, called views, indicates how an object-oriented design can be clearly separated into objects and their corresponding interfaces. In this model objects can be designed so that they are independent of their environment, because adaptation to the environment is the responsibility of the interface or view. The view can be seen as expressing the semantics for the 'glue' that joins components or objects together to create a software system. Informal versions of the views model have already been successfully applied to operational and commercial software systems. The objective of this thesis is to provide the views notion with a theoretical foundation to address reuse and separation of concerns. After clearly defining the views model we show the formal approach to combining the objects, interfaces (views), and their interconnection into a complete software system. The objects and interfaces are defined using an object calculus based on temporal logic, while the interconnections among object and views are specified using category theory. This formal framework provides the mathematical foundation to support the verification of the properties of both the components and the composite software system. We then show how verification can be mechanized by converting the formal version of the views model into higher-order logic and using PVS to support mechanical proofs.

Chapter 1: Relative Concerns and the Choice of Fertility Empirical research has shown that people exhibit relative concerns, they value social status. If they value their children's status as well, what effect will that have on their decisions as parents? This paper argues that parents and potential parents are in competition for status and rank in the generation of their children; as a consequence richer agents may cut back on the number of children they have and invest more in each child to prevent children of lower income agents from mimicking their own children. This effect need not be uniform so that equilibrium fertility may e.g. be a U-shaped function of income, even when agents would privately like to increase fertility when they receive greater income. These findings have wide ramifications: they may contribute to our understanding of the working of the demographic transition; they also suggest that the low fertility traps seen in some developed countries are rather strongly entrenched phenomena; and they o er a new explanation for voluntary childlessness. Chapter 2: Relative Concerns and Primogeniture While pervasive in the past, differential treatment of children, i.e. different levels of attention and parental investments into children of the same parent, has become rare in modern societies. This paper offers an explanation based on technological change which has rendered the success of a child more uncertain for a parent who is deciding on how much to invest into each of his children. Within a framework of concerns for social status (or relative concerns), agents decide on how many children to have and how much to invest in each child. When their altruism towards each child is decreasing in the total number of children, it is shown that they may solve the trade-off between low investment, high marginal return children (that come in large numbers and hence hurt parental altruism) and high investment, low marginal return children (that come in low numbers) by demanding both types and hence practice differential treatment. Uncertainty over status or rank outcomes of children reduces the range of equilibrium investment levels intro children so that the difference in the numbers they come in is reduced. Eventually the concern for return dominates and differential treatment disappears. Chapter 3: Co-Evolution of Institutions and Preferences: the case of the (human) mating market This paper explores the institutions that may emerge in response to mating preferences being constrained in their complexity in that they can only be conditioned on gender not other characteristics of the carrier of the preferences. When the cognitive capacity of the species allows a sophisticated institutional setup of one gender proposing and the other accepting or rejecting to be adopted, this setup is shown to be able to structure the mating allocation process such that preferences evolve to forms that, conditional on the setup, are optimal despite the constraint on complexity. Nature can be thought of as delegating information processing to the institutional setup. In an application to humans it is shown that the mechanism of the model can help explain why men and women may exhibit opposed preferences in traits such as looks and cleverness. The anecdotal fact that women do not marry down while men do can be interpreted as a maladaptation of female preferences to modern marriage markets.

The use of online personalized advertisements has drawn attention among firms, in efforts of acquiring and maintaining competitive advantage. By collecting individual consumer information, firms are able to personalize advertisements to specific individuals in online contexts. The collection and use of individuals’ personal information have given rise to privacy concerns among consumers. However, contemporary research displays disparate conclusions regarding the extent to which these privacy concerns influence the effectiveness of online personalized advertisements. In order to provide insights regarding this discrepancy, this study explored the theoretical foundations of consumer perceived benefits and risks, upon which contemporary research was based. Two focus groups were conducted to explore how consumers perceive benefits and risks of online personalized advertisements. Using pattern matching, the interpretation of the empirically gathered material implied that consumer perceived benefits, in form of perceived relevance, appears to be insufficient in appealing to the interests and preferences of consumers. Instead, consumers’ perceptions of relevance appear to be dependent on several elements. Furthermore, the findings imply that consumers are aware of the risks through personal information disclosure, yet appear to be unconcerned by them. Instead, consumers seem to possess a sense of hopelessness in online environments, that attempts to restrict the availability of their personal information are pointless.

This case study addressed the problem of implementing response to intervention (RTI) in general secondary education. To investigate this problem, one north Texas school's RTI implementation was examined using the theoretical framework of the concerns-based adoption model (CBAM) and defining RTI as the innovation. RTI-related practices were studied for 10 secondary teachers, two from each core subject (i.e., mathematics, English language arts, science, and social studies) and the fine arts who had been implementing RTI for several years. Data regarding participants' stages of concern about and levels of use of RTI were collected across three time intervals using the three diagnostic instruments of CBAM (i.e., Stages of Concern Questionnaire, Levels of Use interviews, and Innovation Configuration Checklist matrix), behavioral observations during instruction and RTI meetings, and structured exit interviews of participants. Overall, findings indicated that the secondary teachers were at similar stages of concern and levels of use of RTI. Teachers' RTI concerns scores remained highest in the Self phase and lowest in the Impact phase of concern at all three intervals of data collection. As levels of RTI use increased, observed RTI use increased; however, teachers' RTI levels of use scores remained in the early levels of RTI implementation at all three intervals of data collection. Patterns in teachers' responses during exit interviews suggested that contextual factors unique to this setting (e.g., unexpected changes in RTI protocol, priorities of administrative personnel, and demands placed on teachers) may have influenced teachers' concerns about the teacher's role in, the professional development in, and the sustainability of RTI as an innovation. The literature does not currently address secondary teachers' concerns about and levels of use of RTI in relation to CBAM. Therefore, this study not only fills a gap in literature but also has implications for how teachers are trained and supported in implementing and sustaining the practices of consultation and differentiated instruction associated with RTI. This case study provided insight about the importance and value of teachers' participation and knowledge of RTI to facilitate the change process successfully.

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction / Rosemary Talab / The purpose of this mixed methods study was to explore concerns and professional development needs of faculty at the University Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) on the adoption of online learning (OL). This study was also in response to Title 24 of the Alaska Statute’s Recommendation #3, which required sufficient faculty training in distance education technologies for teaching UAF distance courses. This study utilized the Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) as its theoretical framework. A mixed methods design was used to address the research questions. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect and analyze data. A non-experimental, cross-sectional survey design was used, incorporating the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ). Quantitative measures included surveys were sent out to 253 UAF faculty. Ninety-six surveys were returned and usable, with a final response rate of 39%. MANOVA analyses were used to identify potential variables predictive of faculty member’s concerns and professional development needs regarding the implementation of OL. Qualitative measures included three open-ended questions and sixteen faculty interviews, chosen through stratified sampling. The Stages of Concern Questionnaire indicated that the majority of UAF faculty members displayed a typical SoCQ “nonuser” profile in adopting OL. Faculty’s highest concerns were unrelated, self, and task concerns, with a slight tailing-up of impact-refocusing concerns, indicating resistance to OL. Individual variables found to potentially be predictive of faculty members’ concerns included years of teaching experience, administrative support of technology and academic rank. Qualitative measures revealed that overall themes were administrative support, including workload consideration and tenure recognition. Professional development needs included current technology and LMS (Blackboard) workshops. At the same time, faculty voiced their concerns about OL through the themes of instructional quality and support (technical assistance and equipment) concerns. Several faculty members also stated that they needed no support and their resistance of OL. Recommendations for UAF included holistic approach to administrative support, proper recognition of achievements OL achievements, promotion of learner-centered methodology in the transition to OL, professional development that lead to a more collaborative community, an enhanced role for centralized support for staff engaged in OL and LMS training. Recommendations for future studies included further qualitative studies to elucidate faculty concerns within the University of Alaska system. A national study was recommended to help faculty and administrators create better university OL policies and discover mutual expectations of how teaching and developing OL courses could be viewed as part of a new approach to workload considerations in a changing university climate, including the tenure and promotion process.